Panel Presentations Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture 2019

Character Formation in the English Department Zachary Beck, East Texas Baptist University David Splawn, East Texas Baptist University Jeanna White, East Texas Baptist University Ellis Purdie, East Texas Baptist University

The presenters on this panel, all faculty in the department of English at East Texas Baptist University, will discuss various issues related to virtue and character formation in the English classroom. Our department teaches a number of required general-education courses, which gives us the unique advantage of interacting with most of the students during their time at the university. Although the course material for our writing and literature courses easily relates to growth in the virtues, the relationship is not readily apparent to most of our students. We therefore have had to become more intentional in helping students make the connections between reading, writing, and character. Our presentations will focus on the connections that we find most salient and will offer suggestions for drawing students’ attention to them. Dr. David Splawn, the department chair, will share experiences teaching a course on Service Learning in the Humanities to show how studying the humanities relates to the formation of character within the context of the university’s core commitments of embracing faith, engaging minds, empowering leaders, and enhancing community. Dr. Jeanna White, director of the university’s writing program, will explore the use of belief and core values to develop both reading and writing strategies in first-year composition classes. Dr. Ellis Purdie will argue that reading and writing fiction instills in people the virtue of grace: readers and writers who cast stones at the messy characters they encounter on the page effectively end the storytelling process. Drawing on anecdotal findings in his critical theory course showing that students do not know what it means to read as Christians nor how to do so, Dr. Zachary Beck will offer a way of developing Christian readerly virtues using reader-response theory.

A Future for American Catholic Higher Education Michael Bradley, Notre Dame Law School Elizabeth Kirk, St. Lawrence Institute for Faith and Culture Gideon Barr, Ave Maria University

Currently, there are about 247 Catholic institutions of higher education granting degrees in the United States. That is not an insignificant number. Yet research suggests that only about one half of those schools’ students are themselves Catholics, and that number is likely to slowly drop. Furthermore, the number of Catholic students attending the intentionally and robustly Catholic schools that are routinely recognized by organizations like the Cardinal Newman Society or the National Catholic Register is marginal compared to the number of Catholic students at even a single large state university. To put these claims in perspective: roughly 450,000 Catholic college and university students attend Catholic colleges and universities; four million Catholic students attend non-Catholic colleges and universities. And even when one adjusts the latter number to count only those students who practice their faith to an appreciable degree, there are still one million such students - more than double the number of their counterparts at Catholic schools. Synthesis of available data shows that roughly 92 percent of all Catholics in higher education are presently educated at non-Catholic institutions of higher education. In light of all of this, an obvious question emerges: how is the Catholic Church to form this 92 percent - the young men and women who will later comprise the vast majority of the Church’s parents, spouses, employers, workers, lay leaders, parishioners, and the like - in an adult and intellectually responsible Catholic faith? Existing Newman Centers and Catholic campus ministries minister admirably to these students’ liturgical, sacramental, and pastoral needs. But these organizations are not generally well equipped to

1 mediate the Church’s coherent, vibrant, and demanding intellectual tradition or doctrinal content in a sustained and effective manner. So: what can be done? The Lumen Christi Institute for Catholic Thought, founded at the University of Chicago by Catholic scholars in 1997, has pioneered a new model of Catholic higher education and is the paradigm for the answer to that question. Since its founding 21 years ago, a handful of similar institutes have opened their doors on or adjacent to non-Catholic campuses that are home to a large number of Catholic students. These institutes, though possessing their own charisms and institutional vocations, share both challenges and successful practices in common - in recruiting and retention, fundraising, and accreditation - that can and should be studied with a view toward replication. Michael Bradley will introduce audience members to this budding movement of Catholic institutes and centers for thought and culture; explain the need for them; discuss common challenges and helpful solutions to those problems; and diagnose the next steps for the expansion of this important movement that serves the majority of Catholic students in higher education. Elizabeth Kirk will share the experience of directing such an institute at a large public university, one inspired by John Senior’s Integrated Humanities Program. She will also discuss different models of curricular content, along with marketing concerns related to reaching students and encouraging them to participate in institute programs. Gideon Barr will share the experience of seeking to build an institute at a regional public university and the principal challenges in that process. He will also discuss the importance of collaboration between institutes, dioceses, and existing college ministries, as well as the unique sense of vocation which is called for among scholars interested in this movement.

Cultivating Virtue in Philosophy Classes Jared Brandt, Dallas Baptist University Nathan Cartagena, Wheaton College Ryan West, Grove City College

Our papers will relate our experience and pedagogy in seeking to cultivate virtues in our undergraduate philosophy courses. Nathan Cartagena will discuss his attempt to cultivate justice in a course on race during a racially turbulent time at his institution: “In this paper, I detail my answer to this question in four parts. First, I sketch my retrieval of Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of justice (iustitia) in the Summa theologiae. Drawing on Aquinas, I construct my class with the assumption that justice is a virtue (virtus) whose forms regard either interpersonal goods or the common good. Second, I outline the four sections of my class, noting the order of learning I employ to justly lead my students. Third, I describe several course-practices (e.g., short daily-expressions-of- gratitude papers; viewing racial history as ecclesiastical family history) I use to help students read and communicate justly. Fourth, I share student comments about how this pedagogy has helped them become more just toward their racialized majority and minority neighbors.” Next, Ryan West will describe his recent Medieval Philosophy course and his efforts to cultivate the virtue of studiositas: “If Aristotle is right, we all by nature desire to know. Yet not all desires for knowledge are created equal. Augustine and Aquinas (among others) distinguish two very different forms of intellectual appetite, one virtuous (studiositas), the other vicious (curiositas). In this paper, after briefly explaining the studiositas/curiositas distinction, I discuss several pedagogical practices I experimented with in the medieval philosophy course I taught recently at Grove City College, all of which were both inspired by medieval pedagogy and aimed at encouraging students toward studiositas and away from curiositas. Practices include in- class liturgies, a semester-long spiritual exercise, regular memorization assignments, reflection papers, and more.” Finally, Jared Brandt will discuss his attempt to cultivate the virtue of temperance in his Introduction to Philosophy course: “In addition to reading and discussing different views (Plato, Aristotle, and Boethius) on the virtue of temperance, I sought to incorporate some student practices that would help the students to increase in temperance. During a summer Introduction to Philosophy course, I asked the students to participate in the spiritual discipline of fasting. The students identified something related to their desire for

2 food, drink, or sex which they would give up for the duration of (or periodically throughout) the course. In addition, they kept a journal in which they related their experience throughout the fast. In the paper, I’ll discuss my pedagogical decisions, student performance and feedback, and assess the overall effectiveness of this procedure in cultivating the virtue of temperance.”

Historia Magistra Vitae: Teaching World History and Cultivating Virtues Ryan Butler, Anderson University Kelly Cross Elliott, Abilene Christian University Jennifer Hevelone-Harper, Gordon College Thomas Albert Howard, Valparaiso University

In a symposium dedicated to exploring the character of the university, we might do well to first consider what a university education should do and what it is for. As humanities enrollments steadily decline amidst economic anxiety and epistemic crisis, conscientious faculty cannot continue to support a model of higher education that primarily prepares students for the same graduate school and teaching career trajectory as their professors. Our present moment calls on those of us who work in academia to consider carefully the character and role of our own institutions: what does a virtuous university look like in this context? What is the purpose and value of what we do? Such questions and concerns lead us back to medieval and early modern universities’ commitment to moral formation, to education as a means of cultivating virtue. Humanist teachers like Vittorino da Feltre emphasized the formation of the whole person, insisting that the study of history, religion, and the arts made good citizens and thus served everyone. This return to the notion that we should teach and learn in order to imitate the good and to avoid the mistakes of our forebears, that we should train students to see, appreciate, and imitate beauty and virtue in the world, is a welcome and helpful response to our times. Seeking this model, this panel considers the relationship between teaching world history and the development of intellectual and moral virtues. Each presenter explores pedagogical conceptions and practices related to a particular theological or cardinal virtue. Kelly Cross Elliott, in her paper “Hospitality in the University: Listening and Representation,” argues that the practice of hospitality in the classroom lays crucial groundwork for moral formation, and that in 2019, we cannot exercise hospitality without committing to diversity. A hospitable university, a place that extends welcome across difference and encourages all to participate in discovering and amplifying what is good in ourselves and in others, must give attention to representation. Can universities claim to participate in character formation while continuing to offer courses dominated by Western canonical assumptions? Does university education buttress structural inequality by leaving assumptions of heteronormativity, whiteness, and patriarchy in place? Jennifer Hevelone-Harper, in her paper “Teaching History as an Act of Humility, Hospitality, and Love,” draws on traditional monastic virtues to explore how they can inform our teaching of history, so as to better equip students for ecumenical and interfaith encounters. Historians cross cultural and chronological boundaries to understand the experiences of men and women in the past. This process requires a degree of self-emptying that has resonance with the Christian ideal of humility. The desire to understand the ideas of others is an act of intellectual hospitality that welcomes the stranger into an expanding conversation. Drawing from early Christian monastics, Hevelone-Harper examines the ways in which these virtues of humility, hospitality, and love are necessary both for understanding writers from the past and also for building bridges to the other branches of the Christian Church and other faith traditions. Ryan Butler, in his paper “Teaching History as an Act of Hope,” uses slavery as a case study for considering how teaching world history may form the theological virtue of hope within us. Investigating Atlantic-world slavery is a dark and seemingly despair-ridden enterprise. Associated pedagogical decisions sometimes feel like walking a tightrope. On one side, we can fall off into saying: “that was then, it’s over, and no longer affects us now.” On the other side, we can become obsessed with and crippled by the wrongs of ancestors, so much so that we cannot move on. As a people formed by the reality of forgiveness, restoration, and hope because we serve a merciful, risen God, what does it look like to confess our sins and those of our forebears and work toward racial reconciliation instead of wallowing in guilt?

Together, these presentations not only contribute to the lively conversation on character formation in higher education, dialoguing with scholars of pedagogy, history, and memory, but also encourage focused reflection on how the practice of virtues in the classroom is essential to their development.

Character Formation for All: Baylor’s Journey to “Care for the Least of These” Michelle Cohenour, Baylor University Wesley Null, Baylor University Sinda Vanderpool, Baylor University

Like institutions across the nation, Baylor’s landscape, demographics, and institutional priorities have evolved significantly over the past five years. Grounded solidly in the University’s Christian mission of academic excellence built upon a culture of care, leaders at Baylor during the last decade became convicted that they needed to examine the experience of students coming from underrepresented backgrounds so that the institution could take thoughtful action to ensure that “the least of these” can thrive as integral members of the Baylor community. Taking these steps is essential not only from the perspective of serving all students as Christ calls us to do, but also from the perspective of positioning the institution for success for many decades into the future. From first-generation college students to veterans, Latinx students, and those struggling with food security, Baylor has been on a journey to meet the intellectual, social, moral, physical, and spiritual needs of all students in the Baylor family. To achieve this end, leaders from the Office of the Provost and the Paul L. Foster Student Success Center studied institutional data carefully, enacted organizational changes as needed, advocated for necessary internal resources, attracted external grants, and targeted staff efforts to assist students most in need of institutional support. Baylor University transforms students by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment in a caring community. For students experiencing food insecurity, however, such transformation may be hampered. Food-insecure students are individuals who cannot afford or otherwise obtain adequate, nutritious food. A well-understood phenomenon in elementary and secondary education, food insecurity at the college level is a growing focal point for higher education professionals. Over the past two years, Baylor has created four resources designed to aid students dealing with food insecurity. In December of 2017, The Paul L. Foster Success Center opened The Store, an on-campus food pantry open to all students. The Fridge Project has placed a network of mini-fridges around campus to provide students access to quick meals and snacks throughout the day. Lastly, Baylor has hosted a number of Baylor Free Farmers Market and Baylor Mobile Food Pantry events through which thousands of pounds of free fresh fruits and vegetables are distributed to students once a month. These efforts, along with others, have resulted in considerable success not only with respect to sharply improved retention and graduation rates, but also in terms of more holistic formation of all students at the University. In these ways, the University has extended its mission, laid down by its founders, to be a Christian University “fully susceptible of enlargement and development to meet the needs of all ages to come.” Come hear our story about this journey from the perspective of some of Baylor’s leaders who have shaped these priorities for the institution.

Vocation, Character, and the Modern University David Cunningham, Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education Charles Pinches, University of Scranton Caryn Riswold, Wartburg College Kurt Schackmuth, Lewis University

Over the past twenty years, the language of vocation and calling has become more prevalent in higher education circles, particularly at independent colleges and universities. This language has helpfully countered a strictly utilitarian vision of education that concentrates only on career. But this in turn requires reflection and discernment about the good, as well as about the traits of character needed for us to order our

4 lives towards the good. When this reflection takes place in the university, not only among students, but also among faculty and administrators, it can spark a discussion of how the university forms character. Indeed, even institutions as a whole can be said to have particular “callings”; this leads in turn to a discussion of what, in fact, “the character of the university” ought to be. This panel explores the relationship between character and vocation, at both the personal and institutional level. Because one’s various callings help to create the contours of one’s overall direction in life, vocational discernment is key to the formation of character. Those who respond to their callings with energy and enthusiasm are likely to cultivate habits that will enable them to live into their vocations in the best possible way: habits that the moral tradition has described as virtues. The university can encourage a life of virtue; indeed, this is arguably part of its own calling. Yet character can be formed well or poorly, and habits can be virtuous or vicious. Discerning the difference can be difficult, particularly in the modern university, always a site of considerable moral contention. Moreover, the effects of “vocational exploration” are not always positive. The process can sometimes become solipsistic, such that individuals (and institutions) become convinced that they are “called” to a particular way of life that is less than salutary. Alternatively, a particular calling may be very real, but its source may be in competition with other, more urgent calls. Ostensible mentors may nudge their protégés in a direction that does not cohere well with the rest of that person’s life. The language of vocation and vocational discernment is therefore promising, but also somewhat fraught, as a way into understanding the character of the university. An authentic process of discernment is needed, both for students and for academic institutions that are seeking to identify their callings. The panelists will explore positive and negative examples of vocational discernment and their effects on character, at both the individual and institutional levels. They will also offer some suggestions as to how the process of vocational discernment can be shaped and structured, so as to increase the chances that the character that is formed in the process will be a virtuous one. The panel includes several contributors to recent scholarly work on vocation and character, including At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education (Oxford, 2016). Panelists will engage with and respond to this and other recent writing on the topic.

The Life of Virtue is Life in Christ: Pedagogical Practices between Church and Academy Alex Fogleman, Baylor University Lee Nelson, Christ Church Paige Gutacker, Brazos Fellows

This panel explores the topic of character formation in the university as it relates to theological education. Specifically, each of the papers responds to the question: “What does Christ have to do with virtue, and how does that impinge upon the university?” The papers suggest constructive ways in which a deeper reflection on theology’s relation to character formation can enable churches to better serve the academic institutions in their care and Christian professors to better serve their students through more theologically informed practices within the classroom. The first paper argues for the priority of theological education in the formation of character, particularly as compared with approaches that prioritize moral education or imagine that character formation can remain agnostic about its theological assumptions and goals. If universities want to avoid inculcating what Christian Smith has called “moralistic therapeutic deism,” they must make clearer their commitments to theological education as constitutive of character formation. It proposes, finally, practical ways in which churches can work alongside universities in the process of theologically informed character education. The second paper takes a historical excursus to examine patristic catechesis as a case study in the conjunction of theological and moral formation, and then suggests ways in which this model might inform character formation in the university. At the heart of patristic catechesis is the paradox that, while a rigorous moral and theological instruction must precede baptism, only the illumination of the Holy Spirit can inscribe true virtue in the believer. Catechists are thus those who prepare for and assist but do not themselves finally procure the grace received in baptism. Appropriating a similar rationale, university educators concerned with

5 virtue formation might consider their roles as assistants to the Spirit’s work in the formation of virtue in the classroom. Though it is beyond their capacity to form true virtue in their students, professors can see their task as creating the conditions in which such formation is possible. The third paper considers more concretely how particular pedagogical practices embody certain theological visions. Taking its point of departure from Michael Polanyi’s statement, “we can know more than we can tell,” this paper attends to the ways in which the Christian doctrines of creation and the Incarnation clarify anthropological assumptions that shape learning practices. It focuses on the kind of learning that takes in place in embodied, face-to-face contexts through empirical research on such practices as mirroring, encoding, architectural environments, enclothed cognition, contextual skill development, and empathy. The conclusion links these pedagogical practices with the possibilities and obstructions for educating toward the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage.

How Do the Disciplines Teach Character? Brent Gibson, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Undergraduate Research Panel

A panel of undergraduate students of various majors at Mary Hardin-Baylor will each explore how their specific discipline of study does or can potentially teach character.

Higher Education and Humanity: Revisiting Bruce Wilshire’s The Moral Collapse of the University, Thirty Years Hence David Guthrie, Penn State University, Associate Professor Brad Frey, Geneva College, Professor Keith Martel, Geneva College, Associate Professor Jolyn Dahlvig, Geneva College, Instructor Alex Sosler, Montreat College, Assistant Professor

Almost 30 years ago, in reference to the colleges and universities of the time, philosopher Bruce Wilshire lamented: We tend to treat ourselves and our students abstractly, as if we were divided into bodies and minds…the administration takes the body: it houses, feeds, shuttles bodies about; and the faculty takes the mind: it pumps into them information and techniques, and spends much of its time looking beyond the university altogether, seeking authorization from professional peers nationwide. (xxiv) Wilshire goes on to suggest that “the moral collapse of the university” is, in no small way, related to the drift of the academic profession. Ultimately, he offers a prescription for a moral re-direction of higher education that is rooted in a willingness to “rethink what it means to be a human being,” particularly with respect to the identity and calling of faculty (xxiv). This proposed session will take the form of five panelists who will summarize the argument of Wilshire’s book, reflect on their own academic experiences in light of Wilshire’s analysis, examine the relevance of Wilshire’s correctives for contemporary faculty life, and reference complementary approaches for pursuing a vision of academic life that takes its lead from a robust, Christian ontology. Because the panelists are at different stages of their respective academic careers, they anticipate variation in interpreting Wilshire’s book, while nevertheless commending the pedagogical importance of revisiting “older” books to gain insight on contemporary issues.

Study Centers as Sites of Christian Formation in Secular Universities Andrew Hansen, Anselm House John Freeh, Newman Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture Karl Johnson, Chesterton House Margarita Mooney, Scala Foundation, Princeton Theological Seminary

A significant percentage of Christian students in the U.S. attend secular universities rather than Christian institutions of higher education. Yet many of these students still desire the kind of comprehensive Christian intellectual and moral formation that one might find at a Christian college or university. Campus ministries have long provided Christian discipleship and evangelism training for students on secular campuses, but campus ministers are seldom equipped to offer students the kind of theological and intellectual resources students might receive at analogous Christian institutions of higher education. In the latter 20th century, Christian study centers emerged on secular campuses as institutions seeking to provide this kind of Christian education and formation. These institutions, operating alongside the university’s curriculum rather than within it, are developing innovative approaches to the intellectual and character formation of Christian students and faculty. Study centers (whether ecumenical or operating within a specific confessional tradition) often serve as convening hubs for an intergenerational campus community seeking to understand and practice their vocations as students and scholars. This panel brings together Christian study center leaders from diverse secular universities around the country to discuss this project of character formation through study centers and the variety of programs and practices associated with these efforts. Dr. John Freeh, director of the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture (University of Nebraska) will discuss how great books courses are being offered for credit adjacent to a research university, and how such courses enhance the university’s curriculum by developing the moral imaginations of students at a public university. Dr. Andrew Hansen, Program Director at Anselm House (University of Minnesota), will discuss the design, development, and results of Anselm House’s Colin MacLaurin Fellows Program, which offers foundational Christian theological and moral education to undergraduate and graduate/professional students in a multi-year, cohort-based program of Christian formation. Dr. Karl Johnson, executive director of Chesterton House (Cornell University) considers the ways that residential Christian communities can form students’ character in a holistic context, complementing the intellectual formation offered through other study center programs. Dr. Margarita Mooney, Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and founder of Scala Foundation (Princeton University), will discuss her efforts to supplement the curriculum at Princeton and other universities through seminars and study groups that bring integrity to knowledge and the human person, developing both the intellectual and moral virtues of students. As a whole, the panel will consider the innovative and experimental nature of study center programs, lessons learned through such experimentation, and assess the possibility of study centers as alternative models of Christian higher education and character formation in the 21st century.

Wisdom, Character, and Higher Education: An Undergraduate Research Panel Scott Huelin, Union University Union Honor Students

This panel will consist of several presentations arising from the original research of first-year Honors students at Union University. The research was conducted in the context of a first-year Honors seminar devoted to the topic of Wisdom. Presentations have been competitively vetted on campus, and the four best will be offered as a part of this panel.

Diversity, Discourse, and Dialogue across Difference Ben Johnson, Penn State Law Anne Marie Schultz, Baylor University Skye Perryman, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

The current cultural environment makes it difficult for minds to change and friendships across perspectives to form. The enhanced ability of people to self-select community and information that has accompanied the digital and social media age also contributes to this challenge. With respect to institutions of higher learning, marketing by universities to specialized cultural segments similarly has led to a propensity for students and their families to choose undergraduate experiences based on a preexisting set of values. The classical idea of a university as a space of open expression and where free discussion and debate about divergent and unpopular views can take place is increasingly undermined, as institutions of higher education often feel pressure to manage such discussions in order to satisfy an increasingly consumerist base of stakeholders who expect universities to represent their own personal ideals. The classical pursuit of discourse and dialogue within the academy that can lead to the changing of minds is becoming more uncommon. This environment presents challenges for those in higher education seeking to engender within students the moral courage and personal friendships necessary for character formation and the full examination of preexisting values structures. This panel will explore these challenges from a multidisciplinary perspective and one that combines both personal narrative and academic study. Drawing upon methods from the legal academy, liberal arts academy, as well as classical Platonic and Aristotelian perspectives, panelists will discuss ways in which character formation can help to overcome polarization and lead to greater hope for harmony in both the academy and the larger world. In Teaching Philosophy in Troubled Times, Schultz argues that academic philosophers must respond to contemporary political and academic cultures of divisiveness by reimagining our approach to philosophical dialogue on campus and in the classroom. Schultz begins by describing several cultural threats to the Academy, and then explores the complex dynamic that shapes contemporary academic philosophical dialogue through the lens of Valerie Tiberius’s 2016-17 survey “The Value of Philosophy Survey.” Shultz describes several events at a variety of college campuses that illustrate these broader cultural dynamics and closes by articulating proactive pedagogical practices that foster inclusive classroom conversation. Hopefully, these classroom environments will give rise to new forms of philosophical community where people across the political divide can share their diverse perspectives in ways that are collaborative and cooperative. In Crossing the Bar: The Legal Community as a Model for Campus Character Formation, Johnson and Perryman draw upon their academic and professional work to discuss ways in which the legal academy and legal practice encourage exchanges on often highly controversial topics within a community. They will argue that aspects of approaches from the legal academy and professional community could be adopted in ways to enhance virtue formation among undergraduate students. Through personal narrative, Johnson and Perryman will also discuss what many might see as their unlikely friendship in light of their differing views. They will discuss how the university contributed to their development of what Aristotle calls a “friendship of good” that has enriched their work and the broader meaning of their lives.

Cultivating Virtues Through Interfaith Engagement: Shared Goals, Different Disciplines Marion Larson, Bethel University Amy Poppinga, Bethel University Sara Shady, Bethel University

The United States today is both religiously active and religiously diverse--the kind of situation that can breed misunderstanding, suspicion, or even violence. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Colleges and universities can help students prepare for healthy encounters with different religious voices. Faculty and co- curricular partners have both an opportunity and responsibility to foster character education by helping students build bridges across religious differences.

Church-affiliated colleges and universities provide a valuable space for students to grow in faith while preparing for lives of service to others, yet many of our students leave college with little exposure to or knowledge of religious difference. Although we live in a religiously diverse society, many institutions either do not reflect this diversity or do not know how to engage it well. Of particular concern is the minimal relationships students on many campuses develop with religious “Others,” leaving them without the virtues and skills needed to constructively navigate a multi-faith world. We will present pedagogical strategies from the disciplines of English, Philosophy, and History for helping students develop interfaith competency, not only in terms of intellectual content, but also in terms of virtues and skills. Relying on research from the emerging field of Interfaith Studies (in particular from the work of Cornille, Leirvik, Nussbaum, and Patel) and our own experiences implementing this work at Bethel University, we will introduce and discuss four key virtues crucial for whole-person development: appreciative knowledge, a narrative imagination, receptive humility, and reflective commitment. Some religious communities avoid interfaith engagement, particularly out of fear that students will lose their own faith commitment. We will share recent research and scholarship which demonstrates the opposite: students who engage in guided interfaith activities leave college with a stronger dedication to their religious roots and are better able to articulate their faith identity. Since campus-wide support is needed for interfaith work and virtue development to be successful, we will also provide strategies for working with administration, faculty, and staff across one’s campus. This panel will provide practical ideas and next steps for those looking to meaningfully engage religious diversity and spiritual development.

Shaping a Life Initiative Anna Bonta Moreland, Villanova University Madeline Reynolds, Villanova University Kimberly Hidore, Villanova University Thomas Smith, Villanova University

Traditionally, a college education was designed to help young people cultivate a set of moral and intellectual virtues that prepared them for the responsibilities of a mature life. Yet today there is a growing concern that college students are not successfully crossing the threshold from late adolescence into mature adulthood. In fact, some worry that college life is actually making this transition more difficult. A growing body of research has been emerging to document various dimensions of this challenge: the moral and spiritual lives of college students, their chaotic romantic lives, their unhealthy relationship to alcohol, the deleterious effects of social media and digital technology, rising levels of anxiety and depression, and the challenge of seeking meaningful work and a healthy relationship to wealth. In addition, the twenties used to be the years where emerging adults settled down, started a promising professional life, married and began a family. But in this age of “liquid modernity,” one’s twenties are now a decade full of upheaval, temporary jobs, and risks of aimlessness, so much so that this has been coined “the lost decade.” But the twenties are the critical period of adult development. Clinical psychologist Meg Jay reminds us that the brain undergoes a growth spurt as it rewires itself for adulthood, female fertility peaks at age 28, and the first ten years of one’s working life have an enormous impact on the trajectory of one’s professional development. This book helps young people in their late teens and twenties to cultivate the intellectual, moral, and spiritual virtues they need to become mature adults through a holistic response to the various dimensions of these pressing challenges. Few things are more important than helping today’s youth become mature adults ready for the responsibilities of work, marriage, childrearing and citizenship. Yet sociologist Christian Smith describes college students and graduates in their twenties as Lost in Transition. He finds that they are often unable to deal constructively with moral, cultural, and ideological differences or to adopt healthy and fruitful leisure practices, or to engage their romantic and sexual lives in ways that cultivate the virtues necessary for flourishing marriages and families. These issues, in turn, keep them from becoming engaged by wider developments in civil and political society. College students struggle with the place of technology in their lives, the pressures of social media, with preparing for meaningful work, and engaging in the habits of moral responsibility and self-mastery. They also wrestle with questions of human meaning and purpose in a social environment in which religion plays a decreasing role for their generational cohort. Moreover, they are not currently given a clear sense that the

9 purpose of life is more than accumulating wealth, comfort, and security, nor are they given the reasons why an adult life should be characterized by civic engagement, political participation, and sacrifice for the common good. Having cast off the role of in loco parentis decades ago, university administrators, faculty and staff shy away from addressing thorny issues around campus life, civic responsibility and political participation. They often fear student complaints from all sides of the ideological spectrum or do not know how to manage issues around campus free speech. There is a shocking lack of imagination on college campuses today about how to deal with these challenges in a compelling and forthright way. This panel proposes to share what the Honors Program at Villanova is doing to rise to these challenges. Dr. Thomas Smith, Director of the Honors Program, will outline the “Shaping a Life” Initiative that covers the four years of an honors student experience. Anna Bonta Moreland, Associate Professor in the Humanities Department, will discuss the results of teaching her upper level Theology elective course. Kimberly Hidore and Madeline Reynolds will talk about the “Shaping a College Life” and “Shaping a Work Life” courses offered for freshmen and juniors.

Theological Practices for Teaching Literature: Forming Students’ Character through the Practices of Docility, Hospitality, and Sabbath Julie Ooms, Missouri Baptist University Rachel Griffis, Sterling College Rachel Roberts, North Greenville University

Our panel seeks to articulate ways in which teachers of undergraduate literature courses can form their students’ character through different theological practices in the classroom. Rachel B. Griffis discusses the theological practice of rest and Sabbath-keeping. She notes that a common concern among college educators is that students are not only reading less but that their capacity, in the digital age, to read long books deeply for extended periods of time is miniscule. Challenges students face regarding their development of deep reading practices are strikingly similar to barriers they, and others, face in relation to observing the Sabbath. Learning to engage practices that require discipline and dedication to activities that are disconnected from measurable goals or instant gratification are particularly difficult in the world of social media, the gig economy, and news apps. Consequently, Griffis suggests, teaching students to read deeply requires them to learn the practices and mindsets also necessary for observing the Sabbath. Her presentation will discuss the character-forming aspects of the Sabbath and articulate them in terms of deep reading practices, including examples of methods for teaching students to pay attention to texts without measurable goals or self-serving expectations. Julie Ooms discusses the theological practice of Christian hospitality and welcoming the stranger. Teachers of literature might most readily see the Christian practice of hospitality as the cultivation of a posture of welcoming: they welcome their students, of course, but they also shape reading lists that are purposefully diverse, “welcoming the stranger” through the texts they teach. However, this version of hospitality in the undergraduate literature classroom assumes a largely white canon as well as a white instructor. Ooms challenges such a framing of hospitality and asks white undergraduate instructors specifically to interrogate their practices. Her presentation seeks to answer two questions: first, how should reading literature shape readers toward hospitality, justice, and activism; and, second, how does the cultivation of true hospitality divested of privilege lead instructors to encourage their students to be inhospitable toward certain viewpoints and texts? Rachel M. Roberts discusses the virtue of docility and its place in the teaching of literature. The virtue of docility, or “readiness to receive instruction; teachableness” (OED), can play a vital part in the undergraduate classroom. Roberts discusses a specific practice that cultivates docility in the college literature classroom: students write daily discussion questions over the reading material, which then form the basis for class conversation. This activity cultivates docility in three ways. First, students develop a teachable spirit as they offer their own perspectives for public discussion. Second, the instructor practices docility by using student questions to guide class content. Finally, both instructor and students learn that there are nearly

10 always multiple possible perspectives on an issue, a perspective that is particularly valuable in the literature classroom. Together, our presentations explore how literature classes form the character of both students and instructors through theological practices.

Beyond Christian Triumphalism: Forming Students of Character through Suffering and Lament Rick Ostrander, Council for Christian Colleges & Universities Aaron Kuecker, Trinity Christian College Trisha Posey, John Brown University

The educational enterprise in the Christian university often seems to be described in triumphalist terms. Christian institutions use phrases such as “transformative leaders” and “world-changers” to describe their graduates—rhetoric that seems more a reflection of American can-do individualism than the Christian values of humility and dependence. Such rhetoric would seem to leave little room for, say, the life of the theologian Henry Nouwen, who left a tenured faculty position at Yale University to work in a home for mentally-disabled adults. What if faithfulness to God’s calling leads not to success and accomplishment but to obscurity, downward mobility, and even suffering? David Brooks’ new book, The Second Mountain, argues for moving beyond the quest for “character” through individual effort to a deeper life characterized by humble commitment to communities. As exemplars, he points to people “who have been made larger by suffering.” Perhaps our society is ready for “Second Mountain” institutions that have also been deepened by suffering and prioritize faithfulness over success. This session will explore how universities can move beyond conventional triumphalist understandings of student formation to root character in Christian values of suffering and lament, and it will provide concrete examples of how that move is being attempted at two institutions. The session is laid out in three parts: 1. Rick Ostrander will set the context by surveying the higher educational landscape and making a case for “institutional humility.” In an era in which universities typically seek to raise their stature and trumpet their unique attributes, is it possible for Christian institutions to honestly acknowledge their own weaknesses and imperfections? What would it mean for a university to embrace suffering and lament as part of its institutional DNA rather than avoiding these aspects? 2. Aaron Kuecker will discuss the role of suffering in the development of students’ character. How can understandings of character formation at a Christian college take into account the importance of suffering in the Christian life? Aaron will share ways that his own institution, Trinity Christian College, has sought to help students acknowledge suffering, learn from it, and incorporate it into their vision of human flourishing. 3. Trish Posey will discuss how the idea of “lament” has impacted her own scholarship as well as providing her students with an alternative to the triumphalist narrative of faith that many of them have grown up with. Drawing on student reflections from the past academic year in response to reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, Posey will demonstrate how the theme of lament can be a powerful means of character formation in college students. The goal of our session is to provide a realistic—and ultimately hopeful—contribution to the discussion of character formation by suggesting that suffering and lament should not be avoided, but rather can be embraced as transformative aspects of the college experience.

“Formation of Women Scholars: Mentoring the Next Generation of Academic Women” Lakia Scott, Baylor University Grace Aquino, Baylor University Kayleigh Renour, Baylor University Uchenna Peters, Baylor University Kristina White, Baylor University Laine Scales, Baylor University (chair)

A panel of faculty and doctoral students share strategies and lessons from participation in Baylor’s Women in the Academy mentoring program for graduate students

How Did We Get Here? Changing Approaches to Undergraduate Moral Formation Throughout American History Andrea Turpin, Baylor University Ethan Schrum, Azuza Pacific

This featured panel provides the historical background to current deliberations over the moral formation of American undergraduates. We argue that considering the debates of the past gives us greater clarity on both the dangers and the opportunities of the present. Andrea L. Turpin draws on her award-winning book, A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion, and the Changing Purposes of American Higher Education, 1837-1917, and her forthcoming historiography of religion in American higher education to describe the changes in the moral component of American higher education from the early 1800s through the first half of the twentieth century. Ethan Schrum draws on his recent book, The Instrumental University: Education in Service of the National Agenda After World War II (published June 2019) in the same Cornell Press series as Turpin’s, to pick up the story from the middle of the twentieth century. Turpin will focus particularly on the shifting role and type of religion within institutions of American higher education, along with the effects of those shifts on collegiate moral formation. She will first establish the approach to collegiate education the United States inherited from the colonial period, in turn inherited from Europe. The bulk of her paper then explores the varying ways historians have tried to make sense of what happened to undergraduate moral formation at different types of institutions in the wake of the rise of the research university in the decades around 1900. The paper concentrates especially on the arguments of George Marsden (1994), Philip Gleason (1995), Julie Reuben (1996), James Burtchaell (1998), Jon Roberts and James Turner (2000), Christian Smith (2003), David Setran (2007), Andrew Jewett (2012), and Andrea Turpin (2016). Turpin will explore what implications these historians’ insights might have for current practice, and will then conclude with the actual lay of the land after the research university revolution concluded in the years leading up to World War II. Schrum will explore two visions for the moral formation of undergraduates that circulated in prominent American universities during the quarter century after World War II. One vision arose within a new understanding of the research university’s mission that he has dubbed “the instrumental university.” This model changed the moral connotations of research, by disconnecting it from character formation of undergraduates and orienting it instead toward stimulating economic growth and solving social problems. Within this model, however, University of California president Clark Kerr articulated a new vision of character formation. Kerr argued that liberal education should prepare students to use their leisure well and consume discriminatingly, because individuals’ liberty to make consumer choices might be one of their most essential freedoms. The second vision was often associated with scholars in the humanities, including leaders such as University of Michigan president Harlan Hatcher and Vanderbilt University chancellor Harvie Branscomb. They argued that the university should transmit the moral and spiritual values of cultural heritage to the next generation. In the 1960s, this vision faltered as belief in a unified cultural heritage ebbed.

Character for Engineers and Computer Scientists Kenneth Van Treuren, Baylor University John Miller, Baylor University Bill Jordan, Baylor University

Now more than ever, the importance of character in engineering and computer science is something that needs to be emphasized, especially in the context of the society which has influenced our incoming students. There have always been codes of professional ethics that govern the expected standards of honor and integrity in our professions. Engineering and computer scientists are held to a higher standard of professional behavior that requires they practice the highest principles of ethical conduct. People’s lives are at risk if these behaviors are not practiced. Unfortunately, there seems to be an erosion of some of the core principles upon which the professions are founded. Students entering the university must be made aware of the professional requirements. This is even more important in light of the Christian mission of Baylor University. Our students must be men and women of the highest character to fulfil their professional duties. Upon graduation, Baylor graduates should be models for others to emulate in the workplace and in life. The session proposed would be a compilation of four topic areas of interest to the School of Engineering and Computer Science. These topics would be presented with about 10 minutes or so per topic. Following the presentation, a short discussion would address issues of interest to the audience. The topic areas for the presentations are: 1) Character development across the School of ECS Survey. What is proposed is to survey the faculty of ECS to determine the extent of character development, both in the classroom and extra-curricular activities. These surveys will provide a benchmark for ECS from which to assess the necessity/impact of current activities. Hopefully this will lead to a discussion of how to more effectively and intentionally include character development in the curriculum. 2) Character Development Challenges with Graduate students. In this section of the symposium, we explore the perception of academic integrity among international graduate students in the engineering disciplines, compared to norms in US institutions and Baylor specifically. The possible role of honor codes is discussed, and we suggest possible avenues for improving awareness of ethical issues around academic and intellectual property in STEM graduate populations of international origin. 3) Diversity and Character Development. This presentation will highlight the struggles that face the university concerning diversity and inclusion, as is being addressed by the Spiritual Life Committee. In keeping with the Character workshops sponsored by Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning, the character trait of hospitality (Elizabeth Newman’s Untamed Hospitality and Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key) will be explored, along with its implications for Baylor and to the School of ECS. 4) Virtue Ethics as it relates to Professional Ethics. Dr Jordan has written extensively on this topic and teaches our Engineering Ethics class. While Virtue Ethics is not necessarily Christian, it is very compatible with the Christian life. Virtue Ethics depends on the context in which it is developed. The implications are the development of virtuous character traits that, when adopted by an individual, will guide the individual through life and provide the basis for interaction with others.

Accountability as a Virtue and the Character of the University Charlotte Witvliet, Hope College C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University Sung Joon Jang, Baylor University Byron Johnson, Baylor University

We propose a panel session, which will be comprised of three parts: 1) introduction to the concept and importance of accountability as relevant to character, 2) empirical findings on accountability from college and national samples, and 3) discussion of what the willingness to be accountable might mean for the university. First, we will present the idea of accountability as a virtue with a focus on welcoming accountability. People with the virtue of accountability carry out their responsibilities to others in relationships. They are

13 characteristically responsive to the input of people to whom they rightly owe a response, and they responsibly improve their attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and actions in light of these relationships. We will also address transcendent accountability. Second, we will present descriptive data that illuminate how college and national samples view their accountability with respect to other people and to God, a higher power, or another transcendent guide for living. The relationship of accountability to other virtues and characteristics will also be addressed. Third, a subset of our interdisciplinary team will discuss the implications of accountability for character in relation to the university. For example, what are the implications of accountability for teaching and learning? For cultivating scholars, including both faculty and students? For constituencies in light of a university’s mission? And for university structures and processes? A subset of the interdisciplinary team working on accountability will present in this panel. The entire team includes C. Stephen Evans (PI, philosopher), Byron Johnson, Sung Joon Jang (Co-Is, sociologists and criminologists), Andrew Torrance (St. Andrews subaward PI, theologian), Charlotte Witvliet (Hope subaward PI, clinical research psychologist), Robert C. Roberts (philosopher), and John Peteet (psychiatrist). The panel proposed is made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Plenary, Featured, and Paper Presentations

Matthew Aughtry, Baylor University Screening the Saints

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre suggest that, “I cannot answer the question, ‘What ought I to do?’ unless I first answer the question, ‘Of which story am I a part?’” Through this elegant turn of phrase, MacIntyre gets to the heart of what character is. Yet we might complicate this elegant idea by saying that we can only possess virtues that we have seen modelled. In short, we can only play the part of characters we know well. Our imaginations are limited to the images that we have been given, our own stories grafted into the stories that have worked their way into us. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis suggests, “the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grownups, playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.” My paper insists that the cinematic world allows for a type of imaginative play wherein we may “try on” various roles and navigate various circumstances and relationships right along with the protagonist. But what happens when one engages with stories that are not merely heroes conquering villains or the guy and girl ending up together in the end? What might be possible if one is invited to play the role of a saint? In this paper’s exploration of sainthood in cinema I will posit that the possibility of both encountering and enacting the quality of holiness is magnified. Films like The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Flowers of Saint Francis, and Andrei Rublev will form the core of this exploration. Relying on Peter L. Berger’s concept of plausibility structures, I will seek to make clear how important exemplars are for growth in virtue and how mimesis is a powerful and irreplaceable means of building character. Formation is possible when such filmic explorations are part of a normal course of study. Students are thereby not only exposed to a diverse and varied cast of characters but can also gain a greater imagination for how they themselves might play out the role at which Christian character formation ultimately aims. The previous C.S. Lewis quote ends with a helpful picture of this hope. He writes, “the moment you realize ‘Here I am, dressing up as Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. You will find several

14 things going on in your mind which would not be going there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them. Or you may realize that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash-up. Well, go and do it.”

Storm Bailey, Luther College Study from the Heart: College as Interfaith Activity

Interfaith groups and activities at religiously diverse colleges and universities sometimes function like yet another option among the religions already present. This robs interfaith efforts of the power to forge the dispositions of respectful and peaceful engagement at which these activities aim. Why not, instead, see college itself as interfaith activity? Such a vision serves interfaith goals of character formation and deepens the intellectual life of the college, but it depends upon a conception which will be counterintuitive to some interfaith advocates: the idea that religious exclusivism is essential--not corrosive--to interfaith engagement.

Mackenzie Balken, Bethlehem College and Seminary Cultivating Intellectual Humility in the English Classroom

Of the many virtues that can and should be cultivated by the university, perhaps the most important is that of intellectual humility. The temptation to fall into the vices of vanity and arrogance, which Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski explore as those most clearly opposite humility, is strong for students and faculty members as they engage in study within the university’s highly specialized environment. In contrast to intellectual domination (264) and “exaggerated self-est[eem]” (266), DePaul and Zagzebski explain that intellectual humility “is an unusually low dispositional concern for the kind of status that accrues to persons who are viewed by their intellectual communities as intellectually talented, accomplished, and skilled, especially where such concern is muted or sidelined by . . . the concern for knowledge with its various attributes of truth, justification, warrant, coherence, precision, and significance” (271). In other words, intellectual humility is intrinsically concerned with the pursuit of something external to the observer. Rather than seeking personal influence or recognition, intellectual humility concerns itself with pursuing knowledge while recognizing that knowledge itself is valuable for reasons other than personal gain. This virtue of intellectual humility is understandably difficult to pursue in the university environment. As academics, faculty members and students reside in a setting where grades, tenure, publication, and promotion all encourage self-observation, self-improvement, self- advancement, and self-praise. Even in Christian colleges and universities, where the value of humility is magnified by Christianity’s central story of a Savior who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8, ESV), the temptation to focus on academic status and intellectual talent is strong. However, even while typical academic concerns can impede the search for intellectual humility, the original purpose of the university as such was to cultivate the character of those involved, encouraging virtue in students and faculty, including the virtue of intellectual humility. This leaves us with the question, how can we as academics encourage the pursuit of intellectual humility in ourselves and in our students? Because it would take several volumes to answer this question thoroughly, this paper will consider this question in the particular context of the English classroom. I will argue that English studies as a discipline offers unique opportunities to cultivate intellectual humility through its focus on the practices of reading and writing. More specifically, English study has the potential to cultivate intellectual humility as it encourages students to recognize the “otherness” of text and reader, revealing the limitations of students’ own experiences and the possibility of other ways of knowing the world. I will explain how this is played out in my English composition and literature classroom settings, demonstrating how each encourages the students to exercise intellectual humility in approaching and creating a text.

Peter Beck, Charleston Southern University The Master Plan for Higher Education: A Discipleship Model for Character Formation and Human Flourishing

In 1963 Robert Coleman published a classic in the evangelical world. Readers devoured over 3.5 million copies of The Master Plan of Evangelism. This volume proposed a biblically-obvious but historically- overlooked strategy to reach the world with the Gospel by following Jesus’ evangelistic model. Twenty-four years later, Coleman added The Master Plan of Discipleship, this time focusing on the methods of the apostles. In both, he made the case for the personal investment of one generation in another generation of disciples. Beyond offering an evangelistic stratagem, Coleman reminded the church of a fundamental truth: the mission determines the method. The multiplication of the faithful requires intentional “discipleship.” This truth saturates Scripture. Ezra set his heart to study God’s law, to practice it, and then teach others to do the same (Ezra 7:10). The Great Commission commands believers to make disciples who make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). Doing so, God’s people honor the Two Great Commandments: loving God and loving neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39). The purpose of Christian higher education, uniquely situated in both the City of Man and the City of God, mirrors the biblical standard: the transformation of lives, intellectually and spiritually. When fulfilled, this ideal promotes human flourishing on all levels, now and for generations to come. Christian higher education exists to make disciples, disciples of Christ and disciples of one vocational discipline or another. To this end, the self-replication of a Christ-honoring disciple (the professor) through the lives of their disciples (their students) stands at the heart of this academic enterprise. As Jesus says in Luke 6:40, “everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Thus, rightly understood, a biblical model of disciple making applies in the academic context as well as the ecclesial. By focusing on the development of the whole person by means of intentional faith integration across disciplines and across campus, the Christian academy fulfills its God-given ministry. To accomplish this mission, the faith-based institution addresses two audiences: those who represent and those who attend the institution. First, the school must enlist those with a shared passion for discipleship of this sort and equip them to address the whole student, academically, spiritually, and personally. The resulting integration of faith occurs in the cafeteria as well as the classroom, in the communal gathering of chapel as well as the cubicles of financial aid. Second, the school must ensure students receive not only the highest quality education possible but also one that addresses their whole being as God designed them. Following Aristotle’s triperspectival categories, the discipleship of the student must address the ethos (the soul), the pathos (the heart), as well as the logos (the mind). They must hear the truth from those who love the truth and live it out with the goal of their doing the same. The Christian college that embraces this vision, focusing on transformation not just information, transforms lives while preparing graduates. As the Master planned, it makes disciples who make disciples.

Josh Blander, The King’s College Divine Moral Exemplarism and Human Moral Imitation: Future Direction for Virtue Theory

In this paper, I develop the claim that theistic moral theory, especially theistic varieties of virtue ethics, should regard God as our greatest moral exemplar - the person or being most worthy of imitation and admiration. Therefore, human beings should imitate at least some aspects of the divine character. This suggests that we ought to develop an account of divine moral character that informs our account of the types of traits that human beings should pursue, and examine the degree to which we are able to engage in creaturely imitation of divine character. Grasping this picture enables us to emphasize imitatio Dei as a central feature of Christian character education, and provides virtue theorists with additional insight into how to train students in the virtues.

This model will yield different concepts of at least some traditional virtues. Many traditional Jewish and Christian virtues are attributed to God as traits of the divine character in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the New Testament. Making sense of traditional Jewish and Christian moral demands, like the command in Leviticus that the Israelites are to be holy as God is holy, requires that we develop accounts of these traits that apply both to God and creatures. By deploying an account of univocity resembling the one developed by John Duns Scotus, I argue that the difference between these traits in God and creatures is not captured by a fundamental difference in concept (or nature), but in the degree to which humans can possess or fail to have such traits; in particular, God possesses these traits completely and without lack, while human beings have them incompletely or imperfectly. For example, the language of humility, humiliation, and meekness appear in the Hebrew Bible not infrequently, both in relation to God and to creatures. Attributing humility to God will require that we re- examine most contemporary philosophical accounts of that trait. For example, the standard accounts of humility as limitations-owning or proper self-assessment arguably are incompatible with the claim that humility is a divine characteristic. A similar process can be employed when examining other moral perfections in God that creatures ought to imitate. The view I develop takes seriously the role of revelation in exposing us to God’s character, while also recognizing that we often begin our analyses of moral concepts by examining them in creatures. This view challenges many medieval and contemporary theistic ethical theories. Advocates of theistic virtue theories, including Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory, typically deny that divine character can be replicated or imitated in human character; or that divine character traits can be exemplified in human beings. Thus God does not serve as a moral exemplar in such views; nor does divine character feature in an account of human moral rectitude. Similarly, the imitation of divine character in human action is absent in the discussion of the proper formation of moral character. This denial is often maintained by denying that there are any univocal moral concepts between God and creatures; thus the concepts of divine traits are, at best, only analogically related to human virtues. I deny that theistic ethics should accept this analogical account of the virtues, and affirm that human beings should seek to imitate divine character, even if it is not possible for human character to fully succeed in its imitation or become divine by doing so.

Andrew Bobo, University of Dallas Character Formation and Public Affairs Schools: Is Virtue Relevant to Public Management?

Public affairs programs represent a small and easily overlooked segment of graduate professional schools. Their work is not easily defined, and their graduates can go on to a wide variety of careers throughout the public and nonprofit sectors. The training focuses on giving students the skills of quantitative and qualitative analysis necessary to administer public programs effectively. This includes courses on budgeting, statistics, microeconomic analysis, the policymaking process, management theories, and program evaluation. These empirical pursuits are largely the essence of public management in most programs. The data-driven nature of the work gives the schools a certain prestige and legitimacy because many believe scientific, objective analysis could take policy decisions out of the realm of biased opinions, instead allowing the data itself to determine the path forward. It could rationalize and streamline what is often a chaotic policymaking process, full of compromise and competing interests. However, seen another way, this conception of public management as a purely objective, data-driven process is an attempt to devise a politics that does not require virtue. Technocrats are, by design, interchangeable. Someone’s own courage, moderation, or justice has no bearing on how they conduct survey research, read regression analyses, or generate budget reports. Modern bureaucratic management asks not for noble public servants, just competent ones. This in turn releases public affairs programs from concerning themselves with the normative and messy work of character formation, because it is thankfully not relevant to the kind of work their graduates will go on to pursue. But I would submit that this way of imagining public management is flawed because it attempts to dehumanize and depoliticize what is by nature human and political. Public management is a political art which requires deliberative choices, not a science with objective answers yielded through scientific methods. To use an ancient term, public management is the exercise of prudence. Viewed in this way, the virtues take on a vital

17 importance because, according to Aristotle, the moral virtues and prudence are mutually necessary, distinguishable yet inseparable. The moral virtues help us see the proper ends to pursue, because we are not ruled by our passions and can listen to reason. Prudence then helps us find the best path to these ends. We cannot simply plug in well-trained technocrats to crunch data and make decisions based purely on analysis. Proper deliberation over public questions can only proceed in a person habituated in the moral virtues. The character of the public servants themselves is then highly relevant to their management of public programs. This in turn means that public affairs schools, in order to fulfill their role in training men and women for public management, must find ways to integrate character formation into their programs. These changes could take on many forms, and it is possible that there is much to build on within existing institutional norms and practices. However, it is important to pursue the virtues consciously, understanding their essential role in the prudential judgments of public managers.

Andrew Bolger, College of the Ozarks Pathways to Character: A Model that Works Co-presenters: Brad Pardue, College of the Ozarks and Kendra Bandy, College of the Ozarks

This presentation explores an innovative and integrated curricular and co-curricular program that leverages an 360° eportfolio software in order to help students at a small work college observe their character growth throughout their college experience. By embedding student character reflection, learning, practices, ethical questions, and mentoring at significant developmental junctures, the Thrive Pathway empowers students to own their character development while galvanizing their sense of vocation to address societal issues in ethical ways. Outcomes for participants: - Participants will encounter and reflect on the opportunities that integrated learning pathways can offer for character development. - Participants will be introduced to three different academic courses and four different co-curricular programs that together allow for deep and developmental reflection for student character growth. - Participants will be introduced to an eportfolio software that scaffolds character development reflection. - Participants will learn more about the positive connection between work growth and character formation through work colleges and their unique position in higher education.

Steven Bouma-Prediger, Hope College Earthkeeping and Character: Cultivating Ecological Virtues

How do we design learning to cultivate virtues? More exactly, what educational practices foster ecological virtues such as wonder and humility, self-control and wisdom, justice and love, courage and hope? In this paper I will examine how certain teaching and learning practices have developed in two different undergraduate programs: the Creation Care Study Program in Belize and New Zealand, and my own Hope College May Term course on Ecological Theology and Ethics taught in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. These two case studies illustrate how the Christian faith shapes the design of educational practices aimed at cultivating certain virtues. Reflection on virtue and the virtues has increased significantly in the last few decades. Prompted by Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (among other things), philosophers and theologians, ethicists and educators, psychologists and pastors have given new attention to virtue and virtue formation. There has been a rediscovery of how character shapes conduct. So it is perhaps not surprising that environmental virtue ethics has developed since the early 1980’s as a way to reframe discussions in environmental ethics. Instead of focusing on duties and rights and consequences, a significant new field has developed that promotes reflection on the habitual dispositions to act in ways that foster ecological health, integrity, and sustainability. Called EVE for short, this academic sub- discipline now includes monographs, e.g., Ronald Sandler’s "Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented

Approach to Environmental Ethics" (2007), and anthologies, e.g., “Environmental Virtue Ethics” eds. Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro (2005). There are, however, few Christians doing work in this area. Indeed, I can count on one hand the number of books written in the last two decades by Christians that include a significant discussion of this topic. In short, while EVE is a growing field of inquiry, relatively little attention has been given to it by Christians, despite our rich tradition of virtue ethics. Since 1991 I have been teaching a three-week long May Term course called “Ecological Theology and Ethics.” The majority of this course (2 weeks) is taught in the Adirondacks of upstate New York and involves a nine-day canoeing, kayaking, and backpacking trip. In this course education is seen as formation rather than (just) the dissemination of information. Since 1998 I have been teaching a one-week long course for the Creation Care Study Program in Belize and New Zealand. My forthcoming book, Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic (Baker Academic, 2019), explores in more detail how these two undergraduate programs (and other programs) are intentionally structured to cultivate certain virtues.

Jared Brandt, Dallas Baptist University Aquinas on Growth in Virtue: Aristotle and Augustine in Harmony

Thomas Aquinas inherits two distinct conceptions of the virtuous human being. From Aristotle, he receives a vision of harmony and human achievement: through the process of habituation, the distinct parts of the virtuous soul are operating as one under the guidance of reason. From Augustine, Aquinas receives a vision of moral struggle and victory through divine assistance: the virtuous person is able to resist the inclinations of the flesh through virtues that are given by God and only fully actualized in the next life. This paper explores an underappreciated area of Aquinas’s thought, on the topic of growth in the infused virtues, where he brings these teachings of Aristotle and Augustine into a brilliant harmony. In order to fully understand and appreciate Aquinas’s teaching on growth in infused virtue, one must first understand the essence of the infused virtues and their increase. This is the goal of Section 2. Next, I develop, in Section 3, Aquinas’s metaphysical account of increase in infused virtue and pay careful attention to the associated stages. The section concludes with a close examination of the important imperfections that Aquinas associates with the infused virtues. I demonstrate that growth in infused virtue, rather than the development of the acquired virtues (as many contemporary commentators suggest), is an effective remedy for these imperfections. In the concluding section, I emphasize the ways in which Aquinas’s understanding of growth in infused virtue represents the deepest point of his harmony of Aristotle and Augustine.

Scott Caton, Roberts Wesleyan College John Henry Newman and Character Formation

John Henry Newman’s nineteenth-century lectures on “The Idea of a University,” which were quickly put together and published as a book (initially in 1852), are well-known both in terms of their historical setting and their magisterial content. The book has never ceased publication and has of course remained a standard and basis for conversation for serious Christians of all stripes and denominations concerning the liberal arts and the relation of Christian faith to the liberal arts in the context of undergraduate education. [Other of Newman’s discourses and essays, some not given publicly, were published separately in 1859, and then both “books” were first bound together in 1873 as one work. This work forms the basis for the modern editions.] All are agreed that this classic work reaches far beyond its immediate context--of what a liberal arts education should be for a young Roman Catholic student entering a new Catholic university in Ireland, a project very quickly proving itself an administrative failure for Newman. All are agreed that the book opens up, even today, wide horizons for discussion about the relation between faith and learning, science and religion, independent thinking and authority, teaching and research--and the list could go on and on. This paper will concentrate on this book’s implications for character formation in the context of Christian higher education and the liberal arts. In highlighting and examining these implications, due care will be taken to justify fruitful application of Newman’s ideas to the contextual realities of 2019. In Newman’s time, of course, even the great English establishment universities of Oxford and Cambridge were considered 19 by most English Protestants as integrated centers of character formation. But as is well known, even when Oxford lifted its religious tests for admission (1854) and when Cambridge did the same (1856), the Catholic hierarchy put its own ban on Catholic youth attending either institution; and this was very much related to the concern for the kind of character development, or feared distortion thereof, which would result in a Catholic young man attending either place. So on the issue of character formation, in “The Idea of a University,” Newman offers insights that precede the religious tests being dropped at the two great English universities, and insights that followed the dropping of the tests. While these historical touch-points are not definitive for shaping Newman’s arguments, their context is valuable. This is because Newman’s thinking about character formation is developed through his experience as an Anglican at Oxford (both as a student and as a professor), as an Anglican priest, as a Catholic convert, as a Catholic priest, and as a Catholic educator. Applied to the modern situation, then, how do Newman’s insights about character formation relate to ecumenical issues inside the educational sphere, and how can these insights fruitfully frame the interrelationships for us today of character formation, theological perspectives, and the ethics and epistemics of faith and reason? This paper will seek to propose possible answers for our consideration.

Alex Crist, Baylor University, Residence Hall Director The Hero’s Journey: New Perspectives of Failure and Grace Co-presenter: Kaleb Loomis, Baylor University, Residence Hall Director

Fear of failure inhibits growth, and without acknowledging and combating it, the fear of failure will inhibit the ability to move forward as change-agents in the world. However, the grace of Christ’s sacrifice for us allows us to stumble without tarnishing our identity. As curricular and co-curricular educators, we must be willing to model an openness to failure while providing spaces for our students to do the same. By doing so, we begin to create a culture where the balance of failure and grace calls us to move forward as courageous, faithful testimonies of Christ’s love. In our presentation, we will examine this fear of failure and discuss how we encourage students to embrace their shortcomings through theoretical, theological, and practical lenses. Despite students’ desire to avoid discomfort and failure in and out of the classroom, research suggests the importance of being wrong for the sake of learning and growth. Student success strategies for learning can be applied to student development, including Angela Duckworth’s (2016) research on grit and Carol Dweck’s (2006) research on growth mindset. As educators, we must understand the theoretical importance and benefits of encouraging our students to learn from their mistakes, ultimately leading to more productive thinking and learning. As Christian educators, we also must examine the Scriptural background of failure and its formative nature. Biblical examples, such as Adam and Eve, King David, and the Apostle Peter provide unique insights into how God uses human shortcomings to provide redemption and restoration. Additionally, Joseph Campbell’s (1949) explanation of “the Hero’s Journey” outlines various stages of a hero’s quest for greatness. In the process, failure, through a metaphorical death, is not only a part of one’s journey, but it is a necessary experience. Our students are following this heroic path in their quests for success in college. While it is often filled with troubles and setbacks, our students need educators to walk alongside them, reminding them that failure does not inhibit success, but rather often leads to it. After providing theoretical and theological frameworks of failure, we will describe how one group of students chose to share their shortcomings to create a new culture, one of grace, rather than shame. Within residential living-learning communities, students and staff implemented two different programs to normalize failure among the student population. The first, a weekly award for the best failure with an emphasis on what was learned from the failure. The second, a residence hall-wide series which allowed student leaders and professors to describe their mishaps, big and small, to incoming first-year students. Participants in the session will (1) Understand current research on the topic of failure; (2) Receive practical examples of two types of relevant programmatic efforts with the goal to normalize mistakes and create a community of grace; (3) Analyze the concepts of failure and grace with Scripture to understand how we should respond as Christians; and (4) Reflect on how failure and grace can be implemented into participants’ current contexts.

Clifford Curry, Tarleton State University Core Values and Character Formation

In the Middle Ages, the primary emphasis of universities was the proper cultivation and formation of the characters of their students. Some argue that the colleges and universities of modernity have fallen away from the original purpose of such institutions, namely, character formation. However, this does not appear to be strictly the case in all universities. Tarleton State University is an active participant in the character formation of its students. Tarleton helps to influence the character of its students in a variety of ways, but perhaps most influential are the core values of Tarleton State University. From the moment prospective students step foot on campus for their first Texan Tour, to the moment they walk across the stage as graduates, and at every conceivable moment in between, they are immersed in TSU’s core values. These values of Tradition, Integrity, Civility, Excellence, and Leadership help to shape every single student at Tarleton. “Tickles without the K,” as the values are lovingly called, are a daily reminder of how one should act, not just as a student of Tarleton, but as a moral and ethical citizen of the world. Our core values are very much a part of life at Tarleton. They have played at least a cursory role at every public address given by Tarleton faculty and staff that I have attended. The core values are placed on buildings, flyers, monuments, and even banners. These core values stand to help pave the way forward for the university, its students, and its alumni. Tarleton’s core values are prime examples of virtues needed to have a successful character in today’s modern world. The university’s creation and widespread implementation of these values are key in the formation of their students’ characters. Generally speaking, the students attending universities are relatively young and for many of them this is their first experience living away from home. As such the myriad of opportunities, life choices, and cultures they will experience during their college career will shape their character immensely. Since these core values are very much a part of a Tarleton student’s college experience and the culture of the university as a whole, they should prove influential to the formation of the student’s character. Furthermore, thanks to the great emphasis the university places on its core values, the influence on the character development of its students should be significant. This paper will analyze the virtues of Tarleton’s core values of Tradition, Integrity, Civility, Excellence, Leadership, and service, as well as the role that these virtues have on the characters of the university’s students. Classical influences of character development shall be analyzed from both Aristotle and Aquinas in an effort to determine what is most effective in shaping character development. Tarleton’s core values will then be analyzed in the light of the findings discussed above, in an effort to ascertain their influence on character formation.

John Davis, Hardin-Simmons University This Time It’s Different? Values in the Tech Industry

It’s regularly said that that the tech industry is increasingly influential in our lives. From calls for increased STEM degrees to calls for increased industry antitrust regulation to calls for social media civility to mania about the latest cell phone or game release, goods and services from the tech industry matter to almost all of us. It should be no surprise that increased influence has led to a variety of criticisms of the industry. Tech industry firms have responded to these criticisms in a variety of ways. We have found one of those responses to be particularly interesting to us. Industry firms are making explicit online statements of organizational values to be practiced in those firms. We thought these values would be worth investigating, so we looked at some websites of tech industry firms to see for ourselves just what values key industry firms lay claim to. It should come as no surprise that some stated values don’t necessarily coincide with values and virtues that have been traditionally taught in Colleges of Business. If universities are serious about preparing students for jobs in the tech industry, they might want to consider what they want to teach their students about the industry’s espoused values. We will have a few comments on this, as well. Our approach is (1) to define the tech industry, as we understand it; (2) to sample online industry values statements; (3) to categorize those values; (4) to compare espoused industry values to those historically taught in Colleges of Business; (5) to interview a small convenience sample of industry professionals involved 21 in developing firms’ values statements; and (6) to speculate on what the similarities and differences might mean for those teaching in Colleges of Business. We freely acknowledge this to be an introductory, speculative study. We will develop no theory. One of our coauthors is a tech industry professional who has seen this industry response as a working, practicing professional and has found it interesting. C. L. Sonnichsen (1970) famously described himself as a grassroots historian. We consider this a grassroots philosophical investigation, and we’ve done it just because it’s interesting to us. We are here to learn.

Lanta Davis, Indiana Wesleyan University The Personification of Prudence as a Pedagogical Model

Christian universities often state a desire to educate students for wisdom, but sometimes this goal can feel vague and unformed when it comes to practice in the classroom. Linking wisdom to the cardinal virtue of prudence and examining how earlier Christians understood prudence provides an imaginative entryway into better understanding this virtue and tangibly applying it to pedagogy. First, I will show two representative artistic personifications of prudence. These personifications imaginatively render the characteristics of prudence to make them more memorable to a viewer. They include Prudence’s three faces, which represent the need for memory, reason, and foresight in making a good decision, her mirror, to remind a viewer to “know thyself” and reflect on one’s experiences, and her compass, representing Prudence’s role in guiding and orienting one’s life. After discussing some highlights of the personification of prudence, I will discuss classroom applications. I use the virtue of prudence to explain to students why learning from past texts is crucial to attaining wisdom, for instance, and we also weigh how different characters in the literature we read (such as Odysseus) may be considered prudent or imprudent. We also discuss why prudence must act as the charioteer of the other cardinal virtues, considering how characters like Antigone and Creon may exhibit courage and a desire for justice, but fail to act prudently. By specifically thinking about how the texts we read can teach us something about how to live wisely, students continually participate in translating yesterday’s wisdom to today’s lived reality.

D. Marcel DeCoste, University of Regina “A Professor of Darkness”: Higher Education and the Annihilation of Virtue in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited

Heralded by Dianne Luce as “far and away the most effective dramatic work McCarthy has written” (104), The Sunset Limited (2006) offers readers the starkest of dramas: its claustrophobic, real-time single act presents two men identified and racialized only as White and Black, debating what Camus called the “only truly serious philosophical problem” (3), namely, whether or not White should end his own life. If compelling, this is also the most dialectical of texts. Indeed, Robert Wyllie contends that, despite its having been staged as a play and published as “A Novel in Dramatic Form,” it is best read as a philosophical dialogue on the model of Plato (186). Certainly, cognate readings abound, with critics relating the work to such thinkers as Luther, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegaard. Yet, while they have often remarked how the play stresses White’s identity as a professor—the text so names him fully 87 times—scholars have shed little light on what this fact, and White’s furious longing for self-annihilation, have to shed on McCarthy’s view of the contemporary university. This paper seeks to fill this gap by scrutinizing White’s death wish through the lens of the academy’s forfeit concern with character and virtue. Drawing upon Newman’s understanding of the relationship between the university and morals, and Aristotle and Augustine’s formulations of the classical and Christian virtues, I will detail how White’s arguments in favor of suicide are grounded in an education lacking any belief in, or pursuit of, virtue of either kind. Both as learner and professor, White has located all meaning and value not in people, or in ethical consideration of how to be a good man in community with others, but in the greatest artistic achievements of humanity. The education to which he has given his life, then, has concerned

22 itself with aesthetics, at the expense of both relationship or the cultivation of virtue: “I don’t believe in those sorts of things,” White replies, when Black questions his sense of justice (79). White’s ultimate embrace of death, “I rush to nuzzle his bony cheek” (140), is thus presented as the fruit of a connoisseur’s erudition unable not just to justify itself, to maintain a belief in the value of the Western cultural tradition, but to preserve him from vicious despair in the face of pain and death. Divorced, especially, from the theological virtues, the modern education White embodies professes darkness by combining intellectual pride with moral skepticism and aggressive atheism in such a way as to subvert human solidarity, individual purpose, and indeed the very project of the university itself. Far, then, from emerging as the victor in the play’s philosophical agon, White, I argue, constitutes McCarthy’s warning against assuming a university indifferent, or actively hostile, to faith, hope, and charity can do anything but harm to the values that sustain civilization and the subject both.

Jennifer DePriest, Louisiana College Coding Character into Computer Science

A search for “character and computer science” produces a wide gamut of results, none of which pertain to the theme for this conference. In disciplines other than computer science, there is limited research that examines the impact of technology on families and children. It is undisputable that computer science has changed the world. Character is best taught by example. When professors study and read beyond their own disciplines, encouraging students to do the same, it can ignite passion and build character. Though computer scientists created Facebook and Instagram, and these platforms can be used for good, the decline in character and communication skills among individuals can also be traced back to these pieces of software. Exposing students in computer science courses at a Christian liberal arts college to issues that need to be met within the community and world, relating the required central curriculum courses to programs, apps, and other technological products that could solve these issues will lay a foundation for building character within the students. The data for this paper will show that if students are introduced to needs within the world, and introduced to authors outside of their discipline, it can in turn help cultivate character, which can enhance the quality of products created, bringing about positive change within the discipline of computer science. Furthermore, this research may then serve as a blueprint for other computer science programs so that they too may code character into their curriculum. A pretest will be created to capture data in terms of how students view character and ethics with respect to computer science and technology. Students will be exposed to presentations and case studies, in addition to completing exercises all designed to cultivate the need for strong character and ethics within the discipline of computer science. A posttest will be used to analyze the impact this approach has on the students. Data will be captured from computer coding camps held on July 8th through 11th for girls in the community that range from 7th to 12th grade, some of whom are dual enrollment students, and in computer science college courses taught by this professor from August 19th through September 30th. Data will be analyzed prior to the conference so that the findings may be presented. Computer Science is often thought of as a field devoted to those individuals who are prone to be more left brain in nature. However, when a computer science professor is also passionate and creative, exploring ways to build character within students becomes more than research, it becomes a calling. The results from the research for this paper would be a significant contribution to the literature in this field, due to the lack thereof at the present time. It also has the potential of allowing for a dialogue to begin within the discipline of computer science so that other degree programs may also be enhanced for future generations.

Bryan DeVries, Baylor University Academic Advising: A Framing Practice for Character Formation

Within the field of academic advising, there are generally understood to be two working models of the discipline: prescriptive and developmental advising. At their core, both philosophies have the best interests of the student in mind. However, despite their respective strengths, both theories focus on the 23 vocational and life goals of the student in a largely individualistic manner with heightened stress placed on one’s career. Consequently, limited space (if any) is left for discussion of the student’s educational and vocational goals and their relation to a sense of calling. Whereas calling invites a larger perspective into the conversation, a primary emphasis on career stresses the concerns of the individual at the expense of others. Thus, vocational exploration devoid of conversations pertaining to calling might lead to students who are self-focused and lacking in Christian character. Moreover, these conversational and relational deficits in academic advising negatively impact the world and by extension the advancement of God’s kingdom within it. At a Christian institution of higher education, especially one such as Baylor University, these conversations about calling invite the student into a greater narrative (i.e., the story of God and their involvement in that story). With this enhancement of focus, academic advisors can develop relationships with students which provide opportunities for character formation as they explore their role in God’s kingdom. Thus, this paper will argue that academic advising is (or at least should be) a “framing practice,” as understood by James K.A. Smith, which forms character and virtues in students and orients them to the mission of Christian higher education: to educate men and women for selfless service and courageous leadership as citizens of God’s kingdom in this world. With this specific framework in mind, I will explore the purpose and significance of academic advising in higher education in conversation with the theories of prescriptive and developmental advising. I will also seek to show what exactly is (or again should be) occurring in the relationship between advisor and student. Finally, I will address some of the opportunities and challenges present within academic advising as it relates to being a context for character formation. To my knowledge, no written work exists which addresses academic advising from a Christian faith perspective. Having attended several academic advising conferences, faith is often left on the margins only to be addressed in general terms and without any significant appreciation for its part to play in a student’s educational journey. This paper will serve as an attempt to start the conversation, and this year’s theme for Baylor’s Symposium on Faith and Culture seems to provide an appropriate opportunity.

David Dittenber, LeTourneau University Hands and Feet: Perspectives from Faculty and Alumni on Service in Civil Engineering Education

Civil engineers design the infrastructure that provides people with safe homes, reliable transportation, and a healthy environment. These are all things that can uniquely benefit the whole of society, including “the least of these,” the underserved and the vulnerable. This opportunity for service comes with a lofty responsibility, and along with technical proficiency, practitioners desire civil engineering graduates who possess trustworthiness and character. Therefore, the development of character, or the ability to act upon one’s convictions, deserves to be a key pillar in civil engineering education. According to James Davison Hunter in his highly relevant book The Death of Character, there are three main strategies for moral education: the psychological strategy (encouraging the individual development of character based on personality and feeling), the neoclassical strategy (communicating and enforcing standards from history and tradition), and the communitarian strategy (encouraging shared experiences and elevating groupthink). Hunter dissects each of these approaches and concludes that they are individually unsustainable due to a lack of “particularity” and the absence of ultimate good and evil. However, they are each not without merits and through the synthesis of these approaches within a framework of service opportunities, a Christian university may establish a culture that is conducive to character formation and growth. At a Christian university, students’ exposure to concepts such as Biblical morality and sanctification provides a foundation for the development of convictions. However, developing convictions does not implicitly necessitate the demonstration of character through action; rather, some form of practice must be integrated. A Christian university can effectively attract and mature students of high character through the dual approaches of teaching a Christ-like worldview and providing students with service opportunities throughout their education. These service opportunities may have a Biblical basis (neoclassical strategy, with a shared perspective of ultimate moral authority), involve engagement with and consideration of both other volunteers and those being served (communitarian strategy), and yet be diverse enough in their applications 24 so as to invite a variety of different students’ strengths and interests (psychological strategy, where students’ particularity can be acknowledged and celebrated). At our civil engineering program at a Christian university, we have built a culture where service is common and interwoven as students find their place in a universal story preparing for vocations in civil engineering (or other good works). This service-oriented approach to education not only functions as a hybrid approach for character development, but also produces many other positive results both for our students and the world they desire to impact. To help illustrate the ways our students carry this concept of service along with them, I’ve asked five of our recent civil engineering alumni of exceptional character to share ways God has inspired them: Sam will share about serving neighbors, Allyson about serving learners, Charissa about serving communities, Rachel about serving “the least of these,” and Moriah about serving the Father. Through these examples, we can see how students’ convictions are both fed and revealed through their hearts for serving as the Hands and Feet of God.

Jeff Doyle, Baylor University The Development of Character through Co-Curricular Activities

For the first 250 years of American higher education, faculty served as the primary character educators. However, with the adoption of the German model of scholarship and the rise of the research university, faculty were increasingly pulled away from the character formation of students. Without much faculty oversight, student misbehavior began to increase and universities began exploring how to manage their students’ lives outside the classroom. The result was the emergence of a new profession, student affairs, focused on student engagement and learning outside of the classroom. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the profession of student affairs grew leaps and bounds, resulting in professional organizations and graduate programs focused on student life. The work of student affairs educators increasingly became oversight for almost every facet of students’ lives outside of the classroom. Knowing that most college students are in class for only 15 hours/week, after subtracting 7.5 hrs/sleep per night, there are 100 hundred hours each week still remaining for co-curricular engagement. How does this time get used by students? What do student affairs staff do to engage with students during this time to develop character? The answers to these questions will be the focus of this presentation. Attendees will learn about character formation initiatives in co-curricular learning. This includes the values of sportsmanship and healthy competition through intramurals, the values of community and friendship through the residence halls, and the values of leadership and teamwork through student organizations. Attendees will discover how student affairs professionals intentionally and proactively create environments that maximize character development through their programs. Although many people will say that adulthood begins at 18 years of age, student affairs argues that students still have a number of important developmental milestones to face. Theories of college student development teach about the primary struggles students face while in college. For example, coming to grips with a proper balance between individual autonomy and community membership is a major challenge for students. This is often experienced through residential living settings where students are expected to have a roommate and live in close proximity to a number of other students while at the same time learning to take care of themselves. Other collegiate challenges include decisions to clarify life purpose and efforts at defining what integrity in one’s life will look like. These formative decisions are the norm for co-curricular programs and yet the increasing popularity of on-line programs has resulted in an age of learning that minimizes outside the classroom development. In a university where students are only on-line for their ~15 hours/week of class, there are up to 100 waking hours per week that are missed opportunities for character education. How can universities be more intentional about students’ lives outside the classroom? What opportunities are present for influence that many university educators do not have on their radar? This session will demonstrate the essential nature of the co-curriculum in developing character in college students.

Timothy Ewest, Houston Baptist University Stewardship: A Theory Supporting Character Development, Social Responsibility and Christian Theology

Stewardship This paper explores stewardship as a vital theory to enable the development of individual character. The term Stewardship is used in popular business literature to connote taking responsibility for oneself and for governance of institutions (Block, 1993). Similarly, stewardship as an academic theory (Davis, Schoorman & Donaldson, 1997; Haskins, Liedtka & Rosenblum, 1998; Hernandez, 2008) and has theoretical correspondence to corporate social responsibility and various forms of leadership including: Ethical leadership (Brown and Treviño 2002), servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977), spiritual leadership (Fry, 2003) and prosocial leadership (Ewest, 2015). Stewardship research suggests that leadership is essential to enable communities and the organizations these communities create to live within their designed purpose (Ewest, 2017). Hernandez (2008), whose work is seminal in this field, suggests, “Stewardship is defined here as the attitudes and behaviors that place the long-term best interests of a group ahead of personal goals that serve an individual’s self-interests. It exists to the extent that organizational actors take responsibility for the effects of organizational action on stakeholder welfare. The issue of balance is a key part of taking personal responsibility” (p. 122). This definition clearly supports the idea of the two foci of stewardship, personal responsibility in relationships (leadership) and organizational responsibility, that being, the organization and its relationship to the global community (Corporate Social Responsibility) (Ewest, 2017). Therefore, generally speaking, Stewardship is the result of others-directed leadership, prosocial leadership, and corporate governance that includes responsibility to stakeholders and the social and environmental impacts of the organization. Specifically, responsibility involves deepening relationships with oneself (personal leadership), fellow employees (leading others) and broader stakeholders and organizational impacts (organizational leadership) and when responsibility is taken for all three, an organization and its leaders are considered good global citizens (Ewest, 2017).

Stewardship and Christianity Stewardship is also a Christian concept, often called “co-regency” (Miller & Ewest, 2013). Scripture brings this idea to the fore early on, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (Genesis 1:28). Jesus also teaches the Parable of the Talents, which rewards those who take and multiply the gifts and resources given to them, noting “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28). Co-regency or stewardship teaches that people are co-creators with God, and have a responsibility to use wisely and responsibly the gifts and opportunities they are given. Specifically, we have a duty to partner with God to complete God’s creative work, which includes not only inventing, building, planting, growing, and harvesting, but also a call to heal and repair the broken or fallen aspects of the material world. The Apostle Paul notes how Christ “committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19b). And the final chapter of the final book of the New Testament paints a heavenly vision for “the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2b). Further related to stewardship, Protestants also emphasize covenant theology, which suggests a non- contractual mutuality of obligation and care between counter-parties and stakeholders in commercial matters (Stackhouse, 1995).

Applications to Pedagogy Finally, the paper resolves by discussing practical pedagogical uses of the concept of Stewardship as it is employed at Houston Baptist University’s Archie Dunham College of business.

Shawn Floyd, Malone University, Professor of Philosophy Moral Education and Institutional Competency Co-presenter: Jeffrey Polet, Hope College, Professor of Political Science

Universities often profess an interest in character development. Their mission statements and branding materials promise “transformative” educational experiences which promote heightened moral awareness and civic responsibility. Their curricula invariably include courses promoting not only understanding and intellectual skill but socially and economically just ways of living. In religious universities especially, the development of moral virtue is often portrayed as a central academic goal. Our own institutions are not unique in this regard; they pledge to produce graduates who love truth, are compassionate, and aspire to be agents of “justice, reconciliation, [and] peace.” They also offer opportunities to practice “virtues of public discourse” such as humility, hospitality, patience, courage and honesty. Apart from whether universities ought to guide students’ moral development (an important question in its own right), it is not unreasonable to ask whether they are capable of doing so. The answer to this question depends on at least two factors: (1) the empirical facts about human nature and how moral formation occurs and (2) whether the university’s structure and pedagogical practices are conducive to improving students’ moral character. Consideration of these factors yields what we believe to be a decisive conclusion: American universities are not competent centers of moral formation. Those persuaded that universities should eschew the task of moral formation and commit only to students’ intellectual development may welcome this conclusion. Yet if intellectual habits and aptitudes are (in part) dependent on, or perhaps subsidiary habits of, a good character, then one might ask whether universities are capable of achieving even this more modest objective. Our assessment is based partly on higher education’s de facto objectives and practices. Universities increasingly function as expensive credentialing services. There are, of course, exceptions to this characterization. Yet it seems absurd to deny that higher education’s chief purpose is to train students for professional life; even tasks we might describe as being “morally formative” are subordinate to this purpose. In an academic milieu of this sort, one that is almost entirely utilitarian in its methods and bourgeois in its aims, the prospect of sound character formation is a nonstarter.

Michael Foley, Baylor University Great Texts and Character Formation

How can reading the so-called great books contribute to contemporary university education even though it does not contribute directly to STEM fields or necessarily raise awareness about various social issues? The answer is character formation. Drawing from authors ranging from Shakespeare’s The Tempest to Karen Prior’s On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, I will argue that a careful reading of the great books increases one’s aptitude for discerning the true, the good, and the beautiful, and that this aptitude is crucial in the formation of good character. Moreover, I will argue that there are certain aspects of character that cannot be appropriated from purely ethical instruction but that can be learned from well-crafted narratives, such as those that are found in the Canon of great world literature.

Noel Forlini Burt, Baylor University I Have Called You Friends: Toward a Pedagogy of Friendship in the Classroom

Drawing on Cicero’s ancient text, On Friendship, 12th century Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx penned his own treatise, Spiritual Friendship. Much like Cicero’s text of 44 BCE, Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship was written as a dialogue between interlocutors or, more appropriately, between friends. What emerges from Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship is a Christianizing of Cicero’s early ideas about friendship. Among Aelred’s many insights is the idea that friendship is the primary means through which Christ’s love enters the world. For Aelred, friendship begins in Christ, continues in Christ, and is perfected in Christ. Indeed, so strong was this conviction that Aelred (re)interprets the famous Johannine statement, “God is love” (1. Jn. 4:8), to read,

“God is friendship.” Convinced of the power of this classic virtue and its embodiment in Christ, Aelred began his dialogue with a prayer: “Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.” In this paper, I use Aelred’s insights on spiritual friendship to explore pedagogical practices of Christian virtue formation in the classroom. I suggest that Christ is the Friend at the center of the classroom, compelling learners to befriend one another, to befriend the subject, and to befriend God. Far from offering an overly sentimental or uncritical treatment of the subject, however, Aelred does not suggest that everyone whom we love is to be a spiritual friend. Rather, those whom we choose to befriend are to be tested for their adherence to virtue. Similarly, I propose both a caring and critical testing of authors and ideas, even ourselves and our fellow learners. Authors and ideas in particular are, to borrow a phrase from literary critic Wayne Booth, part of the “company we keep.” Like our spiritual friends, they too should be tested carefully. Alan Jacobs, in A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, puts it this way: “...Not all the books we read will become friends.” Nevertheless, Jacobs argues, we owe a debt of attentiveness to all the books we read, whether they are our friends, foes, or neighbors. With this insight at the foreground of our reading endeavors, we teach students to empathize with authors (and other learners) with whom they disagree, even to befriend them, even as they test whether those ideas are to be drawn into intimate and lifelong friendship.

Curtis Gruenler, Hope College From Character to Communion: Friendship in Mimetic Theory, Dante, and Tolkien

René Girard’s mimetic theory clarifies the need to extend the notion of character to a thoroughly relational understanding of human persons, formed through unconscious imitation. Mimetic theory is mostly known as an account of violence, driven by mimetic rivalry and prevented from runaway escalation by the scapegoat mechanism that Girard finds at the root of archaic religion and, hence, all human institutions. Yet mimetic theory is equally powerful for imagining the potential of communities that aspire not just to survival, but to salvation. The ideal of communion beyond violence, as projected in Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories,” can orient the university toward the goal of shaping people to participate in communities of learning. Traditional thinking about friendship moves powerfully from character and virtue to communion through shared learning. Aristotle saw friendship as the fullest expression of virtue and the strongest connection between individual character and the welfare of the polis. Indeed, by saying that love is the virtue of friends, Aristotle anticipates Aquinas’s thinking about the centrality of love to the virtues, which in turn provides the organizing principle of Dante’s portrayal in the Purgatorio and Paradiso of formation and fulfillment in love. Drawing on Augustine’s City of God, Dante also anticipates a Girardian distinction between acquisitive desire for finite goods that leads to rivalry and envy, and contemplative desire for infinite goods that leads to love. Positive mimesis between two in friendship is still liable to become exclusive, to form its intimacy over against excluded others. Friendship as communion finds its true fulfillment when it is open to the inclusion of a third, the elevation of friendship by universal charity. Inclusive friendship offers an alternative to the normal formation of human solidarity through scapegoating. In Paradiso, Dante’s most compelling representation of redeemed, inclusive friendship is in the sphere of the sun, the community of scholars. Knowledge is an object we can receive as infinitely shareable, and communities of learning are a privileged site for forming ways of relationship that lead to communion. Mimetic theory also suggests that conversion to a new pattern of desire comes principally through choosing to imitate a new model. Some works of literature are particularly successful at mediating conversion to new patterns of contemplative desire. Dante lets us accompany his own conversion while fashioning a communion of knowledge and literary styles that projects the need for inclusive friendships of learning. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales highlights even further the playfulness of contrasting genres and the perspectives that come with them while emphasizing the importance of excluded voices, what Girardian theologian James Alison has called “the intelligence of the victim.” Finally, Tolkien’s great fairy-story, The Lord of the Rings, folds into itself an encyclopedic range of literary forms in the service of representing a fellowship of communion across difference shaped by inclusive knowledge and sacrificial love.

Sonja Hagander, Augsburg University Shaping Communities with Both Roots and Wings

An Augsburg education is small to our students, big to the world. That world is marked by religious and cultural diversity, and it begins just beyond the college quad. Curricular and co-curricular dimensions within higher education experience mine the riches of location for vocational discernment, “sending out” students into the community for site visits, fieldwork, and service learning. This session focuses on the signature Interfaith Scholar Program to share strategies, best practices, and assessment tools for vocational discernment in a religiously diverse world. Augsburg continues to be shaped by Lutheran theological and intellectual traditions. Situated in a neighborhood home to numerous immigrant communities, Augsburg’s diverse students, faculty, and staff experience religious difference not just as a subject for academic study, but as a lived reality in their daily lives together. In classrooms, labs, worship areas, and common spaces, students regularly interact with persons of diverse faith traditions as they fulfill the curricular and co-curricular requirements of their respective programs of study. The presentation will share effective practices for defining “religious literacy,” “interfaith competence,” and “vocational discernment” on a religiously diverse campus that is rooted in a particular tradition. Additionally, we will share emerging opportunities for how these practices impact students in the Interfaith Scholar Program. Finally, we will share the benefits of deepening commitment to vocational and interfaith initiatives by strategically adding a Vice President for Mission role on campus. This new initiative builds long-term commitment and strengthens vocational discernment and interfaith leadership across first- year and beyond with our most racially and potentially religiously diverse student body ever. It is an effort to focus on what it means for our institutions to be rooted—grounded in our Lutheran Christian faith tradition—and at the same time, open—engaged with different perspectives and life experiences. The Interfaith Scholar Program is a competitive, curricular and co-curricular year-long initiative for sophomores, juniors and seniors. This course engages students as partners in ongoing interreligious dialogue and action by exploring methods and best practices for talking about religion in a diverse democracy. By the end of the course, students will: embody the value that interfaith friendships enrich learning, gain the ability to lead on our religiously diverse campus, develop the skill to engage in and facilitate dialogue about truth and core commitments, construct a theology/philosophy out of one’s own tradition that is clear about their core commitments in relation to other faiths and traditions, hear and understand the call to service and social justice from across traditions, and become engaged in interfaith dialogue and action both at Augsburg and in the wider Twin Cities.

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Biola University, Professor of Psychology Intellectual Humility in Christian Higher Education: Virtue or Vice? Co-presenter: Peter Hill, Biola University, Professor of Psychology

The college years are characterized by exposure to diverse ideas and to the complexity and pain of the world. For Christian students, this sometimes leads to periods of spiritual struggle. In a large national study of student spirituality, Bryant and Astin found that 18% of their sample had frequently questioned their religious/spiritual beliefs. While spiritual struggles increased across time in all types of institutions, the greatest increase occurred in students attending Evangelical colleges, from 7% reporting high levels as freshmen to 17% reporting high levels as juniors. Spiritual struggles were associated with lower levels of psychological well-being, physical health, and self-esteem. Intellectual humility is a virtue that can be helpful, both in minimizing the negative impact of spiritual struggle, and in allowing students to engage productively with ideas that differ from their own. However, while at first glance it might seem like a good idea to cultivate intellectual humility in our students, in Christian higher education the task is complicated by a body of research showing that intellectual humility as it is currently conceptualized may be at odds with indicators of religiosity. Psychological research has demonstrated that greater certainty that one’s views about religion are correct and that one’s views are more correct than other views are associated with lower intellectual humility (Leary et al., 2017); that greater 29 reliance upon religious beliefs as a foundation for a specific view on an issue is associated with lower intellectual humility (Hoyle et al., 2016); and that religious fundamentalism, religious participation, religious belief salience, and prayer fulfillment, are all associated with less intellectual humility (Krumrei-Mancuso, 2018). It would seem, counter-intuitively, that cultivating our students’ spiritual lives may be at odds with cultivating intellectual humility. The purpose of this presentation is to clarify the task of cultivating intellectual humility in the context of Christian higher education. We do this in two ways: (1) by offering a perspective on intellectual humility grounded in Christian thought; and (2) by clarifying the nature of religious belief in order to properly situate it as the object of intellectual humility. Drawing primarily on Augustine, we argue that intellectual humility for the Christian is based on glad intellectual dependence on God. It is evidenced in five markers of intellectual humility: (a) a proper unconcern about one’s intellectual status and entitlements; (b) a proper concern about one’s intellectual failures and limitations; (c) a proper posture of intellectual submission to divine teaching; (d) higher order epistemic attitudes that properly reflect one’s justification for one’s views, including those views held on the basis of religious testimony, church authority, interpretations of scripture, and the like; and (e) a proper view of the divine orientation of inquiry. Implications of this perspective for the cultivation of intellectual humility are provided. Furthermore, we explore the characteristics of religious beliefs that should be considered when they are the object of intellectual humility. We consider three characteristics of these beliefs: (1) their existential importance; (2) their non-falsifiability; and (3) their relational nature, which has implicit as well as explicit aspects. We conclude with implications for pedagogy in the context of Christian higher education.

Gary Hartenburg, Houston Baptist University Honors College Theory and Practice in a Mentoring University

Over the past ten years, the Honors College at Houston Baptist University has developed an academic program in which faculty mentoring of undergraduate honors students is central to the experience of teaching and learning. After a brief discussion of the nature of mentoring, this paper outlines both a theory behind the system and culture of mentoring and the practical considerations that continually shape those things in a university setting. First, on the theoretical side of things, there are a number of fundamental issues: (1) that a primary goal of the university is to pass on higher forms of knowledge from one generation of scholars to the next; (2) that students who stand to receive such knowledge must themselves possess certain qualities in order to learn; (3) that among these qualities are intellectual courage, autonomy, and humility; (4) that these qualities can be developed through interpersonal mentoring relationships; and (5), drawing on some ideas in Plato’s Phaedrus, that mentoring students should be the highest goal of university faculty. Secondly, on the practical side, a number of considerations need to be taken into account as a university and, in particular, its faculty think about what ought to be done to develop a mentoring program: (1) The type of students who will be participating in the mentoring program; among the questions to be addressed are whether the students will be undergraduate or graduate, and if undergraduate, whether mentoring will be limited to students at the honors level or not. (2) Which faculty will serve as mentors and what their qualifications and professional development will be. Two important practical questions related to this are how mentoring will figure into faculty teaching loads and how faculty will be evaluated on their mentoring. An additional issue is the absolute necessity of facilitating the continual development of the mentoring skills of faculty members. Just as we ought not to assume that students know how to be mentored, we must not assume that faculty know how to mentor. (3) How long the mentoring relationships will be appointed to last. (4) What university- or program-wide support will be established in order to support mentoring relationships that last more than a semester or two. (5) What the basis for assigning individual students to particular faculty members will be. In particular, it is best if these assignments are made with at least some information about what sort of person a particular student is and what sort of student a faculty mentor will work best with.

The third section of the paper will briefly outline the way the Honors College at HBU has developed its mentoring system in light of the theoretical and practical considerations above. As a three-year, “great books,” general education program in which students spend a majority of their class time in discussion-based and team-taught seminars, the Honors College has found that its commitment to establishing long-term mentoring relationships works very well with these other means we have adopted to facilitate the passing of knowledge from faculty to students.

Justin Hawkins, Yale University Can Greatness of Soul be Taught? C.S. Lewis and Alexis de Tocqueville on Magnanimity in Education

Amid the retrieval of virtue that has marked moral philosophy in the last several decades, one virtue seems widely overlooked: magnanimity. And it is not difficult to see why that is the case. Since at least Aquinas, Christians have struggled to synthesize Christian moral theology with this ornery virtue, which looks suspiciously like a cousin of pride, that deadliest of all sins. And even when the Christians did finally adopt magnanimity as the black swan of moral theory, other challengers to that virtue still lurked. Since the rise of modern capitalism, the doux commerce theory of the ethical function of the marketplace has relegated magnanimity to the pre-modern world as a virtue more fit for muscle-strapped warlords than civilized stockbrokers. But amidst these large cultural forces, there are nevertheless a few voices that continue to argue for magnanimity’s ongoing necessity as a staple of modern, democratic education. This paper examines two such voices: C.S. Lewis, and Alexis de Tocqueville, and attempts to apply their theory of the importance of magnanimity in modern education to the task of the moral formation of university students today. Both of these are, in their own way, theorists of magnanimity in education. Lewis argues in his The Abolition of Man that a creeping relativism permeating fields from philosophy to aesthetics to literary criticism, will eventually have the effect of creating “men without chests,” cowards unable to elevate themselves beyond their meager impulses to consume. Tocqueville, likewise, sees the levelling effect of democracy as pernicious against the honor-seeking that attends the virtue of magnanimity. This levelling effect has the effect of shrinking the soul so that it is concerned with petty pleasures and small comforts, and nothing more. Against this trend of democratic humanity shrinking in upon itself, Tocqueville advocates that magnanimity is necessary to raise the horizons of society toward greatness, nobility, and honor. For Tocqueville, one of the main conduits of magnanimity is education. In a series of chapters in the second volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville argues that universities ought to provide a curriculum steeped in antiquity to “counterbalance our particular defects” and to “prop us up on the side where we lean” in order to introduce the aristocratic greatness of soul into the heart of democratic mediocrity (Democracy in America, II.1.15, “Why the study of Greek and Latin Literature is Particularly Useful in Democratic Societies”). Yet neither Lewis nor Tocqueville believes that this virtue can be taught to all citizens of democracy. Magnanimity is concerned with honor, and most democratic citizens are concerned with industry, acquisition, and money. But most universities have as their stated mission to develop students concerned with honor, greatness, and generosity - the acts that attend magnanimity, rather than the acts that attend consumeristic acquisitiveness. Therefore this paper concludes by considering how universities today might yet work to cast the horizons of its students beyond the maximization of their earning potential.

Kelly Hollingsworth, Baylor University Pedagogical Practices for Building Friendship and Friendliness in Pre-Service Music Education Majors Co-presenter: David Montgomery, Baylor University, Associate Professor of Instrumental Music Education Paper

K-12 teachers face challenges throughout their career that will test their character; furthermore, some character traits overlap as teaching dispositions. Since education preparation programs are expected to

31 develop positive teaching dispositions in pre-service teachers (Katz & Raths, 1985; Lickona 1996; Revell & Arthur, 2007), the door is opened to teach character. The Greek philosopher Aristotle is viewed as the father of virtues. According to Aristotle, humans were to function in the world in accordance with virtue. Among the virtues he taught are friendliness and friendship. Instead of seeing all formal music instruction in K-12 schools as a cohesive unit of music education, many K-12 music teachers often have a myopic view of music education and are focused on building and justifying their own elementary, choir, band, or orchestra programs. In the music education major at Baylor, two classes bookend students’ degree. Introduction to Music Education is designed for students early in their study. It typically includes second semester freshmen, first semester sophomores, and first semester transfer students. Two classes, Student Teaching in Music and Induction to Music Teaching, are taken the last semester of the degree as capstone experiences. Because the music education coursework between these two bookends is divided between instrumental and choral methods, these are the only two semesters in which choral and instrumental majors are integrated. Since Introduction to Music Education is the front bookend of coursework combining choral and instrumental music education majors, the course instructors view this as an opportunity to develop virtues of friendliness and friendship among enrolled students. How is this accomplished? With what results? Our presentation will explore pedagogical practices and techniques to develop a united community of future music educators.

David Horkott, Palm Beach Atlantic University Shaping Character through Service-learning

Service-learning projects are not only useful for promoting deep learning; they are also optimal tools for building character. Indeed, service-learning is ideally suited for character development. Service-learning is not to be confused with volunteerism. Service-learning is a form of experiential education where students gain a deeper understanding of course material through action and reflection while serving community interests. The first part of this presentation will provide a succinct account of the utility of service-learning for character development. The healthy, transformational changes that result from the reciprocal relationship between the community and students will be outlined at the beginning. The next phase of the presentation will treat the cultivation of a specific character trait: compassion. Educators ought to provide students with visceral experiences to stimulate their students’ capacity to feel for others, and service-learning supports the development of both compassion and responsiveness. Actions lead to passions. The last part of the presentation will be a report on service-learning projects completed by undergraduate philosophy students in partnership with the Palm Beach Zoo and Conservation Society. This report will highlight the connection between empathy (not compassion) and creative problem-solving as seen in students’ zoo projects over the last four years. The decline of community relationships and the rise of dysfunctional families have created an urgent need for character development in higher education. Service-learning is not a new idea, but it is more relevant than ever.

Scott Huelin, Union University Academic Friendship

Friendship was once considered an essential virtue and practice in Christian discipleship, but various social, economic, and ideological pressures in contemporary America have withered the practice of non- romantic friendships among Christians. In recent his book Spiritual Friendship, Wesley Hill has made a provocative call for retrieving the virtue and practice of non-romantic friendship in our churches. Is such a retrieval more or less needful among Christians in the academy? What academic benefits might accompany, in that context, the spiritual benefits of such a retrieval? This paper will draw upon theological-ethical reflection on friendship and current diagnoses of the academy’s malaise to make a case that Christian universities should actively promote the cultivation of such friendship.

Richard Hughes, Lipscomb University Escaping the Web of White Supremacy: Our First and Most Urgent Task in the Work of Character Formation

At the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion that convened in Chicago in 2012, I was one of five scholars who responded to James Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. As part of my comments, I spoke of the five national myths that I identify in the first edition of Myths America Lives By and how those myths shaped my understanding of both the nation and race when I grew up in West Texas some sixty years ago. When I completed my remarks and took my seat at the panelists’ table, one of the panelists— the late Professor James Noel of San Francisco Theological Seminary—leaned over to me and whispered, “Professor, you left out the most important of all the American myths!” When I asked what I had omitted, he told me straight up, “The myth of white supremacy.” That simple comment launched me on quite a journey of reading, reflection, and introspection. In time I began to see Noel’s point, that even whites like me—whites who strongly resist racist ideology—can escape the power of the white supremacist myth only with extraordinary effort, if at all. That is because assumptions of white supremacy are the air we breathe, the water in which we swim. The result is a thoroughly revised, second edition of Myths America Lives By which now bears the subtitle, White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning, a book about which Yale historian Harry Stout writes, “There is no other work that I am aware of that matches the wisdom of Myths America Lives By.” The book concludes, first, that the myth of white supremacy is the primal American myth that informs all the others; and second, that one of the chief functions of the other myths is to protect and obscure the myth of white supremacy, to hide it from our awareness, and to assure us that we remain innocent after all. If I am correct, then this assessment holds enormous implications for Christian higher education and our efforts to engage in character formation. If we fail to discern the seductive power of white supremacy, even among Christian scholars, then our bias toward whiteness will subvert and distort our own best efforts in character formation. Without that discernment, we will be like rodents who run the circular gauntlet, imagining they are going somewhere when, in point of fact, they never escape their cage. Frankly, this topic is so urgent that it is altogether worthy of the attention of every single scholar who attends the conference.

Christina Iluzada, Baylor University The Opportunity of Character Formation through Spiritual Mentorship

Discipleship is a biblical calling for Christians. Jesus spent much of his time in ministry with 12 men, and he didn’t merely teach them; he welcomed them to travel and live alongside him. Research shows that mentorship has great benefits for its recipients, which is not surprising for Christians who realize that this is the model Jesus gave for ministry. College professors are already in a position of respect; students see them as role models. As professors in secular institutions are calling students to question and even abandon their faith, Christian professors can actively help students to nurture or even find their faith. In this presentation, I advocate for Christian professors providing spiritual mentorship, or discipleship, for interested students. What Christian professors do in the classroom to promote spiritual formation is important, but individual relationships surely have the potential for far greater impact for the few students who are most interested in growing in their faith. Therefore, mentorship groups of students with a professor that meet regularly (weekly or bi-weekly) can promote relationships that are fostered through time spent together and spiritually enriching conversations. The more relational time mentors spend with mentees, the greater potential for influencing them positively. I advocate for spiritual mentorship and not mere career mentorship. At my university, the career services team does a tremendous job with helping students find internships and preparing them to interview for jobs. Students have career fairs and career management courses to help them write resumes, network, and reach their career goals. My concern is helping students to develop as Christians and providing them with a role model, an older Christian friend, who can show them what an adult Christian life looks like, which

33 includes a Christian conception of vocation, work ethic, and communication. In my experience, students need help, beyond career advice, with spiritual issues such as trusting God with their grades; developing biblical/theological literacy; and navigating their way through personal relationship issues such as helping friends with eating disorders, fostering healthy communication with their parents, and thinking wisely about preparing for marriage. This presentation will focus on best practices and challenges from existing literature and personal experience. For example, the presentation will discuss what kind of students are best served by such a spiritual mentorship group and how to build relationships with them for spiritual formation. The challenges of boundaries, appropriate vulnerability, and conflicts of interest with student grades will also be discussed.

Fred Johnson III, Hope College Alive and Well: Duty, Honor, Country

While some may lament the apparent retreat from student character formation in American institutions of higher education, there are refreshing exceptions at the nation’s military academies and in Marine Corps Officer training (OCS: Officer Candidates School) at Quantico, Virginia. For example, the motto “Duty, Honor, Country” frames the behavior expected of every cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point. At the Air Force Academy, cadets conduct themselves in accordance with an honor code asserting that, “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” The Naval Academy’s honor code holds Midshipmen and women to standards mirroring those articulated at West Point while Cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy must exemplify behavior guided by the words “Who Lives Here Reveres Honor, Honors Duty; we neither lie, cheat, steal, nor attempt to deceive.” For officer and enlisted personnel in the United States Marine Corps, during their training and while active in the Fleet Marine Force, they aspire to live professionally and personally in accordance with the simple Latin phrase “Semper Fidelis” which translates as “Always Faithful.” When graduates from all those training environments transition into the regular force structures of their respective services there is the added understanding that, during time of crisis and/or national emergency, no one gets left behind. The only commitment equal to that of accomplishing their mission is to care for the well-being of each other and those for whom they are responsible. Those values, the many hours of servant-leadership instruction and constant exhortations to place their followers and their mission above themselves, explains the potent excellence of America’s armed forces and presents a model of character formation not just for college students but for society. This paper assesses the features and dynamics that have made America’s major military academies (and Marine Corps Officer Candidates School) so successful in producing leaders who, along with being high quality professionals, exhibit standards and behaviors of deeply rooted moral leadership. Also discussed are the benefits such leaders contribute as members of their profession and as citizens of the United States. The paper also analyzes the immediate and long-term costs paid by the United States, domestically and internationally, when leaders in business and government conduct themselves, and their affairs, in manners that are amoral, flawed, or (essentially) malignant. Lastly, the paper presents examples of the successes that are possible when military codes of honor, conduct, and virtue are applied to the (all too often) Hobbesian environments of commerce and governance.

Paul Kaak, Azusa Pacific University A Faith-Informed Framework for Faculty in Professional Preparation Programs

Increasingly, professional education is finding a place in Christian higher education. Such programs offer financial prospects, but they also offer mission-related possibilities. If Christian education remains intent upon preparing graduates to enter their careers as difference-makers, guided by faith, then a strategic approach will be necessary to guide the faculty who develop and deliver these curricula. This is a particular challenge for a number of reasons: 1) there are few theological resources that speak directly to the professions; 2) many (or most) of those who teach in these programs are well-educated and experienced in their profession, but not trained as scholars who know how to work with theological/biblical knowledge; and 3) some Christian universities have opened enrollment to students who don’t share their Christian beliefs. 34

In The Professions in America Today: Crucial but Fragile, Gardner and Shulman (2005) offer clarity on what is needed in a *professional* education. They identify six characteristics of professions. The first three are especially useful in constructing curricular frameworks for those who come for professional preparation in academic contexts. 1. The primary feature of any profession, the commitment to serve responsibly, selflessly, and wisely, sets the terms of the compact between the profession and the society. The centrality of this commitment defines the inherently ethical relationship between the professional and the general society... (p. 14) 2. Second, every profession lays claim to a theoretical knowledge base, a body of research, conceptions, and traditions that is the normative touchstone for its efforts... (p. 15) 3. Third, the defining characteristic of any profession is its mastery in a domain of practice. Professions are essential practical performances... (p. 15) [emphasis added.] Unsurprisingly, Gardner and Shulman identity the “practical” as “the defining characteristic of any profession,” but they also include ethics and theory as aspects of social work, nursing, journalism, psychology, policing, and entrepreneurship*. Here, then, are intersecting spheres that relate, in distinctive ways, to all professions. Accordingly, they provide “doorways” for Christian educators to enlist relevant knowledge/wisdom from the faith in pursuit of their curricular objectives. Brief examples include: 1) Christian explications of virtue (Wright, 2010; DeYoung, 2009) can engage profession-specific dispositions. 2) The reflective methods offered by the field of practical theology (Osmer, 2008; Swinton, 2006) can guide the challenge of thinking Christianly about professional situations and practices. 3) Foundations of faith can engage the ideas that form the seminal ideas of a profession (e.g. Skinnerian psychology in conversation with theological anthropology, [Harrison, 2010; McConville, 2013]). In sum, both professions and Christian faith have their own /orthodoxy/ (right knowledge), orthopraxy (right practice), and orthokardia (right character). These should be brought into meaningful dialogue first by the educator-as-scholar and then in the Christian university classroom. As a result, there will be learning that recognizes and respects the interdisciplinary wisdom that comes from both realms in terms of knowing, doing, and being. * I am aware that there is some debate over what fields should be included in “the professions.” This paper takes a broad view.

Samuel Kelley, Baylor University Historical Thinking, the Ninth Commandment, and Student Formation: Learning and Practicing Faithful Witness in the History Classroom

As the conversation about the role of Christian faith in higher education has expanded to include pedagogy and spiritual and character formation in students, Christian college teachers have had the opportunity to develop, implement, and evaluate new faith-driven practices and pedagogies for engaging their students. As one scholar has recently claimed, Christian teachers must ask a new question about the relationship between faith and learning: “[H]ow might Christian faith relate to the pedagogical process itself and not just to the topics and institutional contexts of learning?” [David I. Smith, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 9] In the spirit of that question, this paper will explore how Christ’s call to his followers to keep the Ninth Commandment (“You shall not bear false witness” [Matthew 19:18]) can be put in the service of and transform “historical thinking,” a pedagogical concept familiar to history teachers in the United States. It asks how a concern to keep the Ninth Commandment might inform the learning and character formation of students in history classrooms at Christian colleges. After sketching very briefly the church’s historical attitude toward the Ninth Commandment (via major theologians’ interpretations of the commandment), my paper will proceed to assess contemporary scholars’ statements about the norms, practices, and goals for the teaching of history at the undergraduate level. The major thesis of the paper is that a concern to bear faithful witness about historical figures and processes offers (from a spiritual, moral, and intellectual standpoint) a sounder justification for teaching students to think carefully about the past than any other reason currently offered by the historical profession

35 in its defense of “historical thinking.” In the last section of my paper I will offer some thoughts about the implications of my thesis for the design of specific activities and practices in the history classroom. In that section I will also address how I think those activities and practices, when implemented successfully, contribute substantially to character formation and spiritual maturity in students.

Christopher Kirk, The Pennsylvania State University Challenges and Opportunities for Moral Development at a Non-Faith-Based Higher Education Institution Co-presenter: David Guthrie, The Pennsylvania State University, Associate Professor of Education

Despite debates about the place of moral education within higher education, it remains an essential student outcome in the majority of United States higher education institutions (Fish, 2003; Kiss & Euben, 2010). College students enter college in a crucial liminal space making it a prime time to influence their development (Mayhew, Rockenbach, Bowman, Seifert, & Wolniak, 2016). Further, recent public scandals, some of which have occurred within higher education itself, also reiterate the importance of character to higher education. Fostering character cannot be relegated to mission statements or implicit messaging embedded in the curricular and co-curricular with the hope that it might imbue students with character. Character development will require institutions to be clear and purposeful in their efforts. Recent research in the fields of moral psychology and student development can provide some guidance as researchers continue to shed light on how college students’ moral development occurs (Corcoran & O’Flaherty, 2016; Mayhew, Seifert, & Pascarella, 2012). One concept that has been especially emphasized within the research literature is moral reasoning (Corcoran & O’Flaherty, 2016). Moral reasoning is often used as a proxy to measure students’ moral development using the assumption that increases in moral reasoning will lead to increases in moral action. Some scholars have critiqued this, however, by questioning the link between moral reasoning and moral action, stating that moral reasoning is necessary but insufficient for moral action (Walker, 2004). There is, therefore, still much about moral development that remains unclear, with one primary concern being how moral development is to be taught. Answering this question has been difficult, especially for non-faith-based higher education institutions, which lack the moral tradition and identity faith-based institutions use to frame and guide their efforts to teach character to students. In order to highlight the challenges and opportunities for the development of character and moral agency at a non-faith-based higher education institution, this paper will report the findings from both a document analysis and informal interviews conducted with the Rock Ethics Institute and the Center for Character, Conscience & Public Purpose at The Pennsylvania State University.

Benjamin Lipscomb, Houghton College Addressing the Crisis of Biblical Interpretation: Some Help from the Philosophy of Law

How is the Bible supposed to form Christian believers? What does the Bible need to be like in order to perform this task? The notions of biblical inspiration and interpretation are in crisis among evangelical Christians. A spate of recent books by and for reflective evangelicals (Rob Bell’s What is the Bible?, Peter Enns’ The Bible Tells Me So, Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired, and Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible, to name four) take as their starting point deep problems with the views about the Bible, inerrantist and quasi-inerrantist, that many evangelical churches and colleges adopted in the twentieth century and still officially endorse. While these views are seldom explicitly articulated anymore, they lurk in the background of much popular evangelical thought. Laypeople and church leaders alike routinely imply that individual passages from the Bible are interpretable in isolation from the whole and are either straightforward presentations of facts or divine moral advice. As a philosophy professor at an evangelical college, I am involved in many conversations where the parties are trying to work out a biblical or Christian view of some topic. But I have seen more than a few students abandon their faith because they come to regard the faith as bound up with their implicit views of

36 biblical inspiration and interpretation; they come to see the latter as inadequate and then don’t perceive any compelling alternatives between maintaining their prior views of the Bible and rejecting Christianity itself. Reflective evangelicals appear to be in what Alasdair MacIntyre calls “an epistemological crisis.” According to MacIntyre, a community of discourse that finds itself in such a crisis can only remain vital (to be blunt, can only hang onto its reflective young people) if it can find new, enriched conceptual resources that enable it to reframe the dilemmas in which it finds itself. In this paper, I propose that evangelicals (and other Christians) enrich their conceptual resources by borrowing from an unexpected source: jurisprudential theory. In particular, I recommend that Christians appropriate something like the interpretivist views of Ronald Dworkin. The position of judges interpreting and applying “the law,” where this incorporates a diverse and sometimes conflicting body of originary documents, constitutional provisions, statutes and precedents, has close and (I think) instructive analogies to the position of Christian believers interpreting and applying the Bible in the context of Christian (and pre-Christian) history, scripture, creedal statements, and practices. Both must treat the object of their interpretive work as authoritative and unified. But both must contend with diversity and conflict within what they interpret. I will articulate an approach to the Bible along these lines that would accord it the clear primacy in faith and life that evangelicals have long insisted upon without committing to unsupportable claims about its complete perspicuity or even consistency.

Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb, Houghton College Impoverished Empathy: Teaching Literature in the #metoo Era

Near the end of the George Eliot’s novel, Adam Bede, Arthur, the heir to the local estate, says to the title character: “Perhaps you’ve never done anything you’ve had bitterly to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it’s worse for me than for you.” Adam forgives Arthur and the scene ends with Adam “feeling that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone.” When I teach this novel, my students find it difficult to understand Adam’s decision to abandon hatred, because Arthur is a sexual predator. He uses his power and privilege to seduce and impregnate a teenager and hides his actions behind his privilege until she stands trial for infanticide and is sentenced to death. Arthur only accepts responsibility for his role once he is publicly implicated in her crime. It’s “worse for Arthur” because he has lost his reputation in the community. It’s a truism frequently invoked in defenses of the humanities that reading fiction teaches empathy. Eliot said that she hoped “that those who read [her novels] should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from them.” This capacity for empathetic engagement with fictional characters, the argument goes, prompts compassion towards similar people in real life. Empathy, however, has recently come under scrutiny. Sara Konrath’s longitudinal sociological studies measuring empathy suggest that it has declined precipitously in young people since 2000. And recent books like Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy and Fritz Breithaupt’s The Dark Side of Empathy suggest that the concept is less uniformly promoting of social good than one might suppose. People are, for instance, prone to selective empathy. We empathize with those with whom we most identify or who most compel our emotions and not with some others. Our capacity to empathize, ironically, may be a factor in the polarization of public discourse. This paper argues that the decline of the concept of common human brokenness and the weakness of the idea of empathy has led to an impoverishment of moral discourse in the literature classroom. Eliot continues the statement above with a qualifier: she wants her reader to “imagine the pains and the joys of those who differ from them in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring human creatures.” For Eliot, sympathy is grounded, not in being a vulnerable and sympathetic victim, but in the common human condition of being a “struggling” and “erring” creature. Eliot, though not a Christian, unconsciously draws on the Christian ideas of depravity and grace in her theory of fiction, a helpful corrective to the impoverished concept of empathy that we’ve used to defend the significance of the humanities.

Sabrina Little, Baylor University Training the Virtues: Emotional Precursors in Moral Education

In Aristotle’s Ethics, he writes that virtue is exceedingly rare. In part, this is because developing the virtues is a demanding process of directing the emotions toward their proper objects and helping a learner to act well, consistently over time and across situations. But more so, this rarity is due to certain material preconditions of virtue Aristotle describes, which effectively exclude large swaths of the population: We should be born with a docile natural character that has its basis in our biology. We need to have the right kinds of early moral experiences, be exposed to exemplars with practical wisdom, and be subject to an education that shapes our desires in the right ways before we are intellectually mature enough to choose well for ourselves. Furthermore, we must be privileged enough socioeconomically to have ample leisure time for intellectual reflection and deliberation. In the current philosophical literature, many Aristotelian assumptions about the biological and socioeconomic preconditions of virtue are being revisited and either endorsed or challenged in different ways (Kristjánsson 2018; Leunissen 2017; Miller 2018; Annas 2011). For example, Mariska Leunissen writes that a person’s biology so determines the possibilities for acquired character that developing virtue is merely a matter of moral luck: A person either has a physiology that can support the development of virtue, or she does not. My goal in this paper is to contribute to this literature by assessing one possible impediment to virtue development, lack of caregiver support in early emotional development. Since Aristotle describes virtue as a “modulation of emotions,” we can understand early developments in emotional regulation as foundational to the developmental process of acquiring virtue, and this is an example of how our moral development is not wholly “up to us.” I will compare the findings of two psychologists, Ross Thompson and Shari Kidwell, on the role of caregiver support in the socialization of emotion. Both of these psychologists have studied the caregiver’s role in equipping children with emotion concepts, asking how these concepts might shape the development of conscience. According to Kidwell, most parents are inarticulate about what might make an action a good one. This is interesting in terms of virtue development, since caregivers are the ones who equip children with a moral vocabulary and teach them what makes an action choice-worthy. If parents predominantly track misbehaviors, as her research shows, then children know what to avoid but lack a vision for what is excellent. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that Kidwell’s findings on parental inarticulacy about good actions depart from Thompson’s findings. Thompson studied suburban, predominantly white and financially stable families, whereas Kidwell studied mostly poor, Appalachian, broken families. Families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds spoke less fluently in terms of both emotions and good actions. Using these findings, I ask whether some people are better positioned to develop virtue because of their early upbringing, and I investigate whether these limitations can be overcome by later education. I also place these findings in conversation with Aristotle and contemporary virtue ethicists on developmental questions of virtue.

Christopher Mathews, Oklahoma Baptist University Liberating Music: Corporate Singing as Character Formation Co-presenter: Justin Barnard, Union University, Honors Community, Professor of Philosophy

“It is plain that music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.” (Politics, Aristotle) Building upon the foundation of Plato, Aristotle embraced musical training as an essential element in the development of the liberal man, endorsing not only musical understanding but also performance abilities. (“Children should be trained in music so as actually to take part in its performance.”) This high view of music is evident seven centuries later in the writing of Church Father, St. Basil: “These harmonious melodies of the Psalms have been designed for us, that those who are of boyish age or wholly youthful in their character, while in appearance they sing, may in reality be educating their souls.” Boethius conveyed a similar 38 perspective in the sixth century, writing, “Discipline has no more open pathway to the mind than through the ear. When by this path rhythms and modes have reached the mind, it is evident that they also affect it and conform it to their nature.” Such beliefs were also held by the Reformers of the sixteenth century, as Luther’s rhetorical inquiry shows: “For whether you wish to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to appease those full of hate, and who could number all these masters of the human heart, namely, the emotions, inclination, and affections that impel men to evil or good?, what more effective means than music could you find?” Three hundred years later, nineteenth-century Baptist leader, Basil Manly, Jr., wrote, “The efficiency of good singing in promoting Christian emotion is still more important than its adaptedness to express it.” From its earliest days, Christianity has recognized the potency of music in character formation. Yet, we have relegated music and musical performance to individual tastes and earbuds and have ignored its ability to shape our students and our society. A quick glance at recent writings on virtue, which largely ignore the arts in general and music in particular, as well as cursory hearings of musical performances across college campuses, indicate that we have yielded this tool, this great gift of God, to those who wish to conform society to its basest existence. During this presentation, we will quickly review what past and current writers have recognized in the power of music and offer a few suggestions of ways modern universities can engage music in the moral, intellectual, and communal development of their students. In particular, we will present the concept of singing as a part of the classroom liturgy, provide recommendations for its implementation, and engage participants in collective song with the goal, as Manly encouraged, of liberating music and employing “her best services in inviting men to holiness.”

Rachel Maxson, John Brown University The Information Seeking Behaviors of Intellectually Virtuous Inquirers: Toward a Virtue Epistemology of the Literature Review

A key opening step in the process of growing in understanding and formulating arguments that contribute to the conversation in any given field of study is gathering and selecting the sources that will inform that project. While this is often assumed to be a straightforward and even trivial step, any instructor who has graded papers replete with citations of Wikipedia and Google as sources knows that it cannot be taken for granted. This paper applies a virtue epistemology framework to the literature review phase of research projects. It argues that the deceptive ease of finding superficially adequate sources highlights the importance of not simply teaching techniques for finding materials that fulfill a checklist of requirements on an assignment rubric, but of cultivating intellectual virtues that apply to each phase of inquiry. The digital media ecosystem that so pervades our lives can foster vicious habits of mind, including inattentiveness, carelessness, and group-think, which we must deliberately seek to counter with practices that form intellectual character. This paper examines the ways that information overload and easy access to search results filtered through opaque proprietary algorithms can undermine intellectual virtue, then turns to describe intellectual virtues that are particularly valuable in the information seeking process. Particular attention is given to the virtues of tenacity and hospitality.

Derek McAllister, Baylor University How Can Ethics Professors Help Students to Become Good? Reflections on Aristotle’s Stated Aim in Nicomachean Ethics II.2

Aristotle says in NE II.2: “[O]ur present inquiry has not, like the rest, a merely speculative aim; we are not inquiring merely in order to know what excellence or virtue is, but in order to become good.” However, there are special problems that this presents for teachers of Ethics in the university classroom. For one, the instructor cannot force the students to become good. (That itself could be thought a breach of ethics!) Secondly, this leads to the important matter of whether and, if so, how to measure or grade the moral formation of students in the classroom.

In addition to wrangling with these problems above, I think that any attempt to hazard a reply will need to address these two elements: (1) communicating clearly the importance of moral formation, while (2) navigating the student’s own concern (or lack thereof) for it. We are already poised to succeed with element (1), since our present enterprise of education is well- suited to teaching content. But we may need more help to succeed with element (2). Richard W. Momeyer (1979) says, “my suspicion is that most teachers of philosophy are sympathetic to [this] model of education, that which emphasizes the growth and development of persons” (135). However, that is not the way our classrooms, curricula, and the whole machine of formal education are set up. “[O]ur pedagogical practices are often more appropriate to promoting a mastery of cultural heritage. Large classes, formal lectures, teacher- determined curricula, formal titles, etc. serve to create the aura of expertise...” (135). This suggests that there are practical changes we can make in our everyday teaching practices (e.g., in the way we design the readings, assignments, and discussions) such that it both captures their interest and enhances and promotes the cultivation of virtue. If pedagogical practices can have a detrimental effect, one that is counterproductive to a specific telos, it stands to reason that pedagogical practices can also have a positive effect in promoting a specific telos. To this end, I propose three practical changes: (a) work with students’ background beliefs, (b) give students the opportunity to practice cultivating habitus, and (c) prepare and offer assignments designed to invite students to reflect on their own moral formation.

Tracy McKenzie, Wheaton College Character Formation and the History Classroom: Thoughts from the University of Washington and Wheaton College

This paper will draw on my efforts, over the span of more than three decades, to promote character formation in history classrooms, first at the University of Washington, a large public research university where I taught for twenty-two years, then at Wheaton College, a private Christian liberal arts college where I have served for the past nine years. At both I have taken to heart C. S. Lewis’s dictum that “the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts,” and accordingly I have labored in both settings to engage “the knowing hearts” of my students and link the careful study of the past with the development of intellectual and moral virtues. In both settings I have also experienced powerfully the force of what Parker Palmer has called the classroom’s “hidden curriculum.” Over time I have come to believe that it is not just the individual classroom that invariably conveys an invisible “teaching behind the teaching,” however. Institutions inescapably promote “hidden curricula” as well, and at the University of Washington I found that the larger institutional context in which I labored worked at cross purposes with my efforts and, to a distressing degree, undermined the highest goals to which I aspired as an educator. In contrast, my time at Wheaton has underscored to me the incalculable advantage that, at their best, Christian institutions can afford the educator who aspires to engage the heart of students. In the second half of my paper, I will highlight some of the ways that I have been freed to promote good disciplinary thinking using language and concepts related to Christian virtues such as charity, humility, and hospitality. I will share as well how the setting at Wheaton has facilitated the promotion of moral reflection, as opposed to moral judgment. Moral judgment, as I am here defining these terms, is directed outward, as we strive to understand the world around us, while moral reflection is directed inward, as we attempt to understand ourselves. As applied to history, we engage in moral judgment when we use our critical faculties to determine the guilt or rectitude of people, events, or belief systems we encounter in our study. We approach history as a medium for moral reflection, on the other hand, when we determine to make ourselves vulnerable to the past, figuratively resurrecting the dead and allowing their words and actions “to put our own lives to the test.” In sum, moral judgment renders a verdict but requires nothing of the knowing heart. Moral reflection is deeply introspective and never leaves the heart untouched.

Mitchell Neubert, Baylor University Virtue: An End and a Means in Business Schools

In this presentation, I explain the ways in which character is intentionally developed in Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business and explore possible applications that could transfer to other business schools or business contexts. Specifically, I will provide curricular and co-curricular examples of teaching and practicing virtue and invite the audience to consider applications in their own teaching and spheres of influence.

Matthew Niermann, California Baptist University The Wise Designer: Integrating Intellectual Virtue Formation into Design Education

Contemporary design practice is situated between the historic practice of craft, the scientific analysis of the natural world, and artistic production. Through abductive reasoning, design seeks to resolve ill-defined and multi-faceted problems via the creative development of the artificial world (Lawson, 2017). While designers are skilled at navigating such complexities to produce a fitted solution, there remains the possibility of a range of solutions to any design problem. As design decisions become increasingly impactful in the marketplace, there is a growing anxiety and demand to validate design decisions beyond “designer intuition” (Parsons, 2017). In response, designers seeking to validate design decisions have increasingly sought validation from outside the practice and process of design. In this vein, design firms have taken to hiring sociologists and data scientists, design publications highlight non-functional artistic gestures, non-profit design entities seek to attract potential donors through numeric validation of impact. However, such attempts to externally validate design apart from the very process of design undercuts the role and value that designers bring, namely wisdom within the design synthesis and decision-making process. Despite decades of research into the design process and design decision making (Cross, 2007), no work has considered the role of the designer’s character in the design process. Specifically, no work has considered the value, the role, or the development of the designer’s intellectual virtues in relation to design. In light of this, this paper counters the trend of seeking external validation for design decisions by bringing due attention to the value, role, and development of character formation for designers via intellectual virtues. Specifically, this paper first proposes an alternative design process model, Virtue-Centric Design. The Virtue-Centric Design model seeks to integrate a design specific set of intellectual virtues with the design process. By doing so, designers and design students can strategically look to and develop intellectual virtues during the process of design. Secondly, this paper proposes a pedagogical model for utilizing the Virtue-Centric Design model within a design studio context, providing due focus on character formation via intentional development of intellectual virtues. Included in this pedagogical model is a proposal for specific exercises aimed at intentional intellectual character growth of the designer. The wisdom of the designer is a crucial part of successfully navigating ill-defined and multi-faceted problems. Thus, an intentional focus on the development of intellectual virtues within the designer is a foundational necessity, and a necessity that demands a new attention from university educators seeking to train successful designers.

Chris Noble, Azusa Pacific University Virtue Corporatized: Neoliberalism and the Case of Azusa Pacific University

“And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves, and then also to look after our neighbour.”—Margaret Thatcher, Woman’s Own Magazine, 31 October 1987

Thatcher’s prosaic modification of Cain’s old question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, exemplifies, in an ironically paternalistic mode, the philosophical and economic program that political philosophers now classify under the rubric “neoliberalism.” Associated with financial deregulation in the 1970s, neoliberalism could be broadly defined as the doctrine of radically free capital. For neoliberalism, money itself, in its most abstract and symbolic forms, detached from material means of production, possesses the right of self- determination. Such a doctrine, of course, requires the corollary that voracious, unregulated marketplace competition provides the engine and algorithm by which capital makes its will known. In such zero-sum games, inequality becomes a necessary and ideal feature of economic systems. For, without winners and losers, capital would be paralyzed. Consequently, for neoliberalism, we must seek to grow richer than our neighbors before we “look after” them. Indeed, we have a duty not to look after them until we have fully realized ourselves. Thus neoliberalism makes a virtue of social atomism and a fetish of efficient competition. As the second decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, it ought not be difficult to perceive that neoliberalism operates as a powerful secularizing agent in religious institutions of higher learning. Indeed, for many enrollment-dependent faith-based institutions, neoliberalism has usurped historical faith traditions and has coopted them for its own purposes. This usurpation has passed virtually undetected by administrators whose telos would seem to derive from a Dickensian utilitarian nightmare in which cancerous bureaucracies exist only to feed and reproduce themselves. As the political philosopher Wendy Brown has argued, neoliberalism fosters particular forms of subjectivity in which individuals monetize themselves as brands; each individual becomes, in Foucault’s prophetic phrase, “an entrepreneur of the self.” These extreme self-commodifications operate at such a profound level of consciousness that even explicitly theological formulations of human identity, for example, the imago dei, are reconceived as investments in and improvements of human capital rather than as transcendent principles or ineffable mysteries. In the modern protestant university, it is thus perfectly conceivable that one might attend a workshop on how better to reflect the imago dei. Not a spiritual exercise or a retreat, but a workshop. It is not merely that, a la Max Weber, the protestant notion of “vocation” has been harnessed to serve business interests; rather, the business model itself has been made an ideological prerequisite to the exercise of Christian virtue. It is not merely that Christians make good workers, but rather that, for many administrators, faculty, staff, and students, the notion of radically free capital has become, unconsciously, the very ground of spiritual life. In this paper I advance the thesis that neoliberalism constitutes the dominant ideology of enrollment- dependent American evangelical institutions of higher learning and that, indeed, without it such institutions would cease to exist. “Virtue education” in such institutions, even when glossed with Aristotelian marketing, reduces ultimately to the commodification of virtue, not its exercise. I propose to illuminate this thesis through a case study of the past turbulent year in my own institution, Azusa Pacific University. The trauma of a self-inflicted financial crisis in August 2018 precipitated an administrative reaction which laid bare the existing divisions between contradictory understandings of virtue. The question for the university, then-- which I will argue is simply a representative microcosm reflecting the situation of many CCCU institutions--is this: can a Christian university teach virtue when its own embodied definitions of virtue are determined by the whims of capital?

Clint Patterson, Texas A&M University College Student Sportsmanship Pledges: Character Cries from the Stands? Co-presenters: Andrew Meyer, Baylor University and Meg Patterson, Texas A&M University

After a public and very difficult sexual assault investigation at Baylor University, from top to bottom, the institution attempted to ensure Christian character values were being developed and promoted at all levels of the student experience, including athletic engagement. A Baylor University student sportsmanship pledge initiative, installed during the summer of 2016, highlighted the Christian values of respect, support, and honor. Our study sought to ascertain which Christian principles are most saliently important among intercollegiate student fans and validate whether the current values in the sportsmanship pledge represented characteristics identified by current Baylor students. Character traits previously described by Cox and Haney (2002) were used as Christian character traits along with the three stated values of the 2016 student sportsmanship pledge. Current students (n=1276) who attended home football games during the 2017-2018

42 season voluntarily completed an online survey. This case study had three major research questions: 1) how student fans perceive the current sportsmanship pledge; 2) whether other important Christian values were missing; and 3) what areas of campus life students considered important for promotion of the pledge. Bivariate correlations and regression analyses determined which sportsmanship traits students deemed important to being an intercollegiate fan, while qualitative data analyses demonstrated further insight into students’ perceptions of this character initiative. Results indicated respect and loyalty are the two current sportsmanship pledge traits considered important by student fans. Furthermore, the Christian character traits of faith and forgiveness were also deemed of high importance. This research contributes to the dearth of scholarly literature related to student sportsmanship pledges. In addition, this paper offers practical implications for both secular and faith-based universities attempting to create character-based initiatives relating to fan behavior. These findings are also informative for intercollegiate athletic campus partners such as student affairs, administrators and stakeholders, and potential developers of a sportsmanship initiative.

Timothy Pawl, California Baptist University Retrospective Meaning-Making as Central to Gen Z College Student Character Development: Results and Inferences of a 2019 Grounded Theory Study

We are at a critical time in the history of undergraduate education. Compared to past generations of the last half century, today’s graduates must have greater resilience and openness to dissimilar others due to organizational restructuring, career path uncertainty, and increasing workforce diversity (Maree, 2017). Yet, the students graduating for at least the next decade - Generation Z - display less resilience and more fear over the uncertainty of interacting with people unlike themselves when compared to Millennials, Gen X, or Baby Boomers (Twenge, 2017). Regarding resilience and openness, there appears to be a gap in the character readiness of Gen Z. Even for Christian educators, faith integration is likely insufficient for closing the gap because it is usually limited to teaching students to think biblically about their discipline. Especially in professional schools, such as a school of business, how is an educator to address faith and/or character formation when one is neither a theologian nor trained in student development? This presentation proposes one way forward. It reports on the infusion of a resilience and openness building assignment into a business course, a qualitative study of what happened, and some inferences for educators from the findings. The assignment builds on Clydesdale’s (2015) finding that undergraduate resilience and openness with others develop by learning reflective practices focusing on one’s narrative. To engage students in classroom reflection, the assignment was guided by the field of narrative identity, which holds that people form and organize autobiographical memories that become foundational to their often- unconsciously-held sense of identity. Importantly for this assignment, life story narratives develop significantly in the late teens and early twenties, form a critical part of identity, and tend to drive behavior (McAdams and Guo, 2014). The simultaneous grounded theory study of 51 student stories found Gen Z students developed resilience and openness by retrospectively accepting purpose and meaning in previously debilitating difficult life episodes. Most reported later acceptance of the redemptive meaning of the difficult life episode only because they felt accepted by significant people at the time or soon thereafter.

Lewis Pearson, University of Saint Francis Teaching for Character, Not Assessment: A Vision for Teaching the Formation of Virtue in a Philosophical Ethics Curriculum

Years ago while discussing our philosophical ethics curriculum, a colleague said, “Of course we can only teach historical views, or theory and argumentation, or case analysis; it’s not like anyone is proposing to teach ethics as a formative venture, because how would you even assess that?” As the philosophy program director, my response was, “Actually, forming character and teaching our students to be virtuous is exactly what I envision.”

Thinking that assessment should govern choices in curricular design at best leaves unanswered the question of what it is that one intends for a curriculum to do. And thinking that the teaching of philosophical ethics amounts to nothing other than exposure to information or the honing of critical thinking skills is a misdiagnosis of human nature, or philosophy, or both. The problem with intelligent but wicked people typically is not that they don’t know history or theory, or haven’t learned how to argue, or don’t know how to analyze a case. The problem is precisely that they are wicked, lacking self-knowledge of their wickedness, or a character readily capable of reformation, or the will to reform. Often they lack all three. Such people don’t primarily need critical thinking skills or exposure to concepts like the categorical imperative. They primarily need training in virtue. Put succinctly, the intelligent but wicked person does not need information as much as she needs transformation. A philosophical ethics curriculum guided by these lights will be more likely to matter to a student on the one hand, and on the other stand as an offering worthy of Lady Philosophy (to follow a metaphor from Plato’s Republic, 496a-b), avoiding reinforcing the common misperception of philosophy as nothing more than casuistic wordplay with no relation to truth or reality in general, let alone to one’s individual life in particular. In this presentation, I will share part of the vision for our philosophical ethics curriculum, seen as a training in virtue and character formation, by describing the design of my freshman-level Ethical Foundations course, including both an outline of the particulars (text selection, sequencing of reading, assignment design, etc.) and also the reasoning behind these choices. Part of this explanation will involve arguments for why some common choices were avoided, for instance, eschewing the use of textbooks and anthologies (because of how they implicitly reinforce relativism, or encourage proof-texting, or contribute to the dismissal of the wisdom of ages past, or hide editors’ pernicious agendas), as well as eschewing the use of things like current event case studies (because of how they interfere with docility). Lastly, while grading and assessment will not be a focus, they will be addressed briefly in the presentation, and they can certainly be expanded upon for those interested during the question and answer portion of the session.

Thomas Pearson, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley On the Day When Aristotle Taught Engineering at the University

The title of this essay is perhaps misleading, since its focus is not restricted to engineering, but is directed as well to medicine, law, education, journalism and business. Many educators today are wary of the growth of these professional programs within university curricula, while uneasy over the shrinking dimensions of a liberal education that promotes the traditional disciplines of the arts and sciences. That perspective seems to be motivated by the notion that, to take one example, “ethics” is mode of abstract episteme, rather than a concrete and robust techne. This essay will argue instead that professional programs such as engineering, medicine and business are, from an Aristotelian perspective, ideal academic venues for teaching virtue and for developing moral character among students in higher education. I will propose a model derived from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, principally his texts God, Philosophy, Universities, and more recently, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. In this model, professions will be defined as social practices, in the sense described by MacIntyre. Defined in this way, standard contemporary professions are specifically circumscribed communities of practice, embodying internal goods disclosed in the conduct of their designated activities. According to this model, preparing students for professional careers in engineering, medicine, business (and other social practices) provides universities an opportunity to inform and to direct those students toward becoming moral agents within their respective disciplines. As an example, the essay will offer a glimpse of the manner in which Aristotle (and MacIntyre) might teach an engineering course, concentrating on the particular virtues that inhabit the internal goods of engineering, and situating those virtues as active in the conduct of engineering practice. Contributing to this project is MacIntyre’s response to his own lament that university curricula have become fragmented, with distinct and isolated faculties primarily concerned to establish and protect their own turf. MacIntyre’s remedy is for university curricula to be re-integrated, with philosophical (and attendant theological) themes and insights merged in a single trajectory of producing mature moral agents. What better way to realize this than to enrich professional programs, such as engineering, by making ethics central to the university’s effort to produce excellent engineers? Aristotle could show us how.

Windy Petrie, Azusa Pacific University Empowering Students Through a Virtues Approach to Literary Criticism and Autobiography

I have recently developed an Interdisciplinary Writing 2 GE course called Narrative Economics in which students read and write narratives and critical texts about class, work, and economics. For the last half- century, literary criticism about these issues has been almost exclusively written from a Marxist perspective, with the exception of a few recent works such as Pride and Profit: The Intersection of Jane Austen and Adam Smith. In my course, students are invited to analyze literary texts through the additional lens of what Narrative Economist Deirdre McCloskey has termed The Bourgeois Virtues, which stem from the classical and Christian virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Courage, Faith, Hope, and Benevolence. My paper will demonstrate what new readings and new understandings can result from using this approach. Our university intentionally serves a significant population of first-generation and/or low-income students, and I have witnessed this approach give students an empowering vocabulary and framework which allows them to better understand their past experiences and future choices. In one unit of the course, students read and interpret the same fictional narratives using different theoretical approaches: The Bourgeois Virtues and Marxist Literary Criticism. My discussion will focus on what a virtues-based interpretation can offer in the study of three short stories: “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis, and “Every Other Thursday” and “The Three of Them” by Edna Ferber. “Life in the Iron Mills” is a tragic tale about a talented but uneducated working-class sculptor working in a refinery. “Every Other Thursday” is a Progressive-Era short story about a maid-of-all-work and her relationship to her employers, while “The Three of Them” is about the head housekeeper in a hotel. When students read the stories through this lens, they discover that while Davis’ story showcases exploitation and injustice, it also explicitly indicts the lack of these virtues in three bourgeois characters who visit the mill, meet the sculptor, recognize his potential, and fail to act appropriately. Ferber’s stories also demonstrate that the bourgeois virtues are not just for the bourgeois, but can provide paths to economic and personal freedom available to her working-class characters. Ferber’s working-class characters empower themselves and others around them by exercising the Prudence, Temperance, and Courage which their employers, like the mill-owners and visitors in the Davis story, lack. Once they are comfortable and confident with this type of vocabulary and analysis, students write autobiographical narratives examining their own experiences and assumptions about work, class, or economics through this lens, identifying what virtues they may have been taught in their lives, as well as ones they would like to further pursue in the future. In teaching this course, I have found that the virtues approach gives students a new and valuable way to speak and write about not only the narratives of others, but also to frame their own personal experiences, expectations, and goals.

Harry Lee Poe, Union University The Cultivation of Virtue or Spiritual Growth: Allies or Opponents?

With the collapse of the faith and learning project in American evangelically-minded Christian colleges and universities at the beginning of the twenty-first century, some faculty members at Christian schools turned to a revival of the classical virtues that appealed to medieval Christendom. Who can argue with the virtues? The answer to this question depends upon who defines the virtues and what character traits come to the fore. Jesus and the apostles avoided the virtue language of first-century Roman society and stressed that the development of a holy character was the work of the Holy Spirit, even while stressing the need for a person to submit to the leading of the Spirit. The medieval church, no slave to scripture, compiled various lists of virtues that reflected the social conditions of the time. The recent romanticizing of the medieval synthesis among evangelically-minded Christians poses several problems in terms of forming a biblically-based understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in spiritual formation in the face of the allure of tradition.

This paper will explore the challenges and the possibilities for incorporating character development into the curriculum of Christian colleges and universities while not abandoning the idea of a Christian way of thinking about the academic disciplines.

Steven Porter, Biola University The Effects of the Disappearance of Moral Knowledge on Virtue Acquisition

Philosophical and psychological approaches to virtue acquisition regularly make the point that a person’s “knowing the good” is insufficient on its own to form virtue (e.g., see Baehr, Miller, Snow, Zagzebski). And yet, it is important not to bypass too quickly the role of ‘knowing the good’ in virtue acquisition. On a commonsense moral psychology, recognizing virtues as knowledge (not mere feeling or cultural preference), while not sufficient, is necessary for the acquisition of virtue due to the role of knowledge in constraining non-virtuous desires. All of this is fairly non-controversial. What is not non- controversial is Dallas Willard’s claim that moral knowledge has disappeared from contemporary Western societies, and that this disappearance affects the process of virtue acquisition. Willard’s thesis is that knowledge of good/bad, right/wrong, virtue/vice is no longer available as a public resource for moral guidance. If Willard’s ‘disappearance thesis’ is correct, then persons in such a society will struggle to acquire virtue. The paper concludes with a discussion of Willard’s proposed solution to the disappearance of moral knowledge--i.e., the identification of the good person as the basis for moral knowledge--on the acquisition of virtue.

Trisha Posey, John Brown University Classics and Learned Virtues

While conference attendees garner much wisdom from one another’s expertise in the classroom, the student perspective grounds our pedagogical theories in practice. The following Honors students from John Brown University have been encouraged to apply to the IFL event that they may give witness to their experience of the connections between education and character formation 1. “Simone Weil on Sanctification in the Bhagavad Gita,” Evyn McGraw, senior triple major in English, Illustration and Philosophy, Presidential Scholar 2. “Tolerance or Tenderness in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities,” Caroline White, junior English and history major, editor of literary journal Shards of Light 3. “Virtuous Emotions in C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man,” Josh Priestner, sophomore history major 4. “Humility in Elie Wiesel’s Night,” Kaitlyn Fontenot, sophomore history major 5. “Courage and Hope in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning,” Sam Heidrick, sophomore psychology major 6. “Vocation in Natalia Ginzburg’s The Little Virtues,” Tami Lykens, nontraditional student, returning after 20 years, major in English 7. “The Virtue of Wonder in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy,” Coby Dolloff, junior English major 8. “Compassion in Elie Wiesel’s Night,” Julia Hornok, sophomore math and music major

Bryan Reece, University of Chicago Aristotle on Education and Wisdom

Aristotle’s theory of virtue and its role in the happy life includes two kinds of wisdom: theoretical and practical. Theoretical wisdom is manifested in contemplation of first principles, primarily God. Practical wisdom is manifested in making the sorts of decisions characteristic of morally virtuous actions. Interpreters of Aristotle have standardly thought that it is possible to manifest theoretical wisdom without practical wisdom. I argue that such an interpretation is mistaken. Aristotle instead believes that one does not reach the theoretical ideal without reliably exercising practical wisdom. This has important ramifications for education. Someone who wants to live the ideal life, which is characterized by contemplation, will need to cultivate and

46 reliably manifest practical wisdom, and therefore the moral virtues. This is indeed the structuring principle of Aristotle’s recommendations about educating citizens in Politics 7-8. He thinks that living a life characterized by contemplation requires properly managed leisure, and leisure will be properly managed only if one has such virtues as temperance and justice. One cannot achieve theoretical wisdom or exercise it reliably if one is apt to be distracted by other pleasures, for example. In light of this fact about human beings, Aristotle insists that citizens who are to be liberally educated must work toward temperance, even if they do not entirely achieve it, as a prerequisite for rigorous intellectual pursuits. This should be accomplished by training the bodily appetites through athletic activity and music. Such training is something that citizens ought to undertake, even if they will never achieve virtue in the strict sense. On this view, a properly liberal education, particularly one that has theological reflection as its pinnacle, must not focus exclusively on intellectual attainments, but rather must involve the cultivation of such moral virtues as temperance and justice.

Amy Richards, Eastern University “The Least of These”: Education, Vulnerability, and the Heart of Virtue

Self-sufficiency and productivity arguably form what our society considers the summit of human life. We go to college, largely, in order to be competitive in the marketplace and to be able to afford a comfortable, perhaps even extravagant, life for ourselves and our families, often with the possibility of prestige thrown in as an added incentive. With this vision in place, we tend to view those persons who are not and cannot be self-sufficient and productive, the young, the old, and, perhaps especially, the disabled, as burdens to be borne or problems to be solved. As such, we often attempt to hide these vulnerable persons from view and do not consider them pertinent to our understandings of human flourishing. But what if an adequate anthropology, and a correspondingly adequate ethic, requires us to consider the most vulnerable as revealing to us the heart of what it is to be human? What if without “the least of these” it is not possible to understand who and what we are? What if we affirmed, with St. John Paul II, that “The disabled person, with all the limitations and suffering that scar him or her, forces us to question ourselves, with respect and wisdom, on the mystery of man. In fact, the more we move about in the dark and unknown areas of human reality, the better we understand that it is in the more difficult and disturbing situations that the dignity and grandeur of the human being emerges”? In conversation with the works of Jean Vanier, Raimond Gaita, Alasdair MacIntyre, St. John Paul II, and Eva Kittay, I will argue that a proper understanding of human vulnerability is necessary for a proper understanding of human nature and thus of human virtue. With this initial argument in place, and believing that every pedagogy and curriculum proposes a vision of the good, I will go on to consider the implications of such an anthropology for education. How can we lead students towards a fuller picture of the nature and goods of human life, including life’s most difficult elements? What attitude towards the most vulnerable should we attempt to guide students towards? How should we guide them into understanding their own vulnerabilities, and thus contextualizing what counts as failure and success? Ultimately, I will argue that without considering these questions head on, any education towards virtue risks missing the very heart of virtue itself: our necessarily vulnerable and interdependent relationships with one another and with God.

Robert Roberts, Baylor University Rhetoric, Understanding, and the Cultivation of Character: Thoughts after Kierkegaard

My talk will be about three inter-related topics of relevance to any university that aims to cultivate moral character in its constituents: faculty, students, and support staff. The three topics are rhetoric, understanding, and character, and the source of my thoughts on this topic will be Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard had much to say about what he called “the upbuilding.” The upbuilding is a kind of discourse that is fit to build up or cultivate character in those who consider it—the author and hearer of the discourse. It becomes so fit by its capacity to engender peculiarly character-relevant understanding, a kind of understanding that is not much promoted in vast parts of the modern university. Kierkegaard not only reflected about upbuilding discourse, but practiced it extensively in his authorship. My talk will endeavor to

47 identify and illustrate the major features of upbuilding discourse and draw some connections between it and any university that aims to cultivate character.

Shirley Roels, International Network for Christian Higher Education Beyond the U.S.: Character Formation Strategies in Faith-Based Global Higher Education

In much of the world, higher education is seen as the engine for economic security and prosperity in a globalized economy. Such a framework easily leads to an instrumental view of higher education, as a means to an end. This approach is a driving force not only in public higher education but also in worldwide Christian colleges and universities. Many such institutions are pragmatic places that believe they have a substantial obligation to improve their students’ capacities to thrive in a global economy. Such emphases may be understandable. As Carpenter and Glanzer note in the book Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance, “We need to recognize that in the emerging global economy, access to technology and skills has become a matter of fundamental justice to the poor, who have been cut off from them. Acquiring relevant skills is a form of ownership no less important than land or money. People need the means to make their work more knowledge-laden, and thus more valuable.” (p. 297) Thus, instead of denigrating the instrumental orientation of many in global Christian higher education, these authors suggest another strategy. They believe that the better tack is to have students add courses that address the social, economic, theological, cultural, and ethical issues of the world in which their professions operate. These authors stress the importance of adding general education units to professional degree programs and the value of a four-year bachelor’s degree. Yet there are several counter-vailing factors that press for three-year applied undergraduate degree programs with less room for general education courses. These include the following: the established frame of three-year undergraduate degrees in many countries; the rise in the advanced high school/early college credit model in the U.S. that results in some students completing only three additional undergraduate years; the European Bologna process that assumes the three-year undergraduate degree model; limits on worldwide financial resources for undergraduate education, underdeveloped national/institutional financial aid systems, and limited access to reasonable, ethical student loans; and the growing expectation of lifelong education with a periodic turn to additional instruction. University-level education is no longer contained within a four-year frame. These factors make it more likely that a three-year undergraduate structure may be the global norm. If so, the curricular solution Carpenter and Glanzer propose may not be realistic for the majority of students. If the undergraduate curriculum is three years in length and principally focused on an applied educational program, in what other ways might the development of moral, spiritual, and intellectual virtue occur in faith- based institutions? This presentation will consider worldwide student virtue formation strategies that do not presume a four-year curricular structure. We will consider how development of such values and commitments might draw upon students’ personal histories and then utilize student orientation, all-campus rituals, chapel worship, student clubs, academic advising, faculty mentoring, and service-learning along with applied professional coursework. This session’s goal is to consider ripe opportunities in a three-year program to help students learn “who they should be.”

Mark Safstrom, Augustana College The Vocational Legacy of Lutheran Pietism: Augustana College and North Park University in Comparative Historical Perspective

Among communities of Scandinavian immigrants in the American Midwest, there was a flurry of colleges founded from the 1860s through the turn of the century. Swedish Christians who were transplanting themselves in a new context debated the best way to spiritually form and educate their pastors and laypeople alike, resulting not only in an array of different denominations, but also different types of denominational schools. Part of this debate involved what to teach: should the curriculum involve secular as well as sacred

48 subjects? To what degree should denominational theological commitments form or constrict the character of these schools? Of the schools founded by Swedes, Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois (1860) and North Park University and Seminary in Chicago (1891) share much overlapping history, yet also divergent paths. This paper will compare the intertwined histories of these two schools, and explain how each drew from and defined their relationship to Lutheran Pietism in particular. So-called Rosenian Pietism within the Church of Sweden was common to both groups, for instance, and involved clear notions of vocation. This vocation was a calling to serve the neighbor in congregational contexts and broader society, which informed the type of education that community leaders sought to reproduce as well as reinvent in their new context. Other influences include the legacy of the folk high school movement as articulated by N.F.S. Grundtvig, P.J. Spener’s conventicle as a source for seminar-style education, and the social justice impulse from A.H. Francke’s Foundations in Halle, to name a few. Founders of both schools were educated at the University of Uppsala, as well, giving a direct connection to the classic European educational traditions of the middle ages. The architects of these Swedish-American schools, such as David Nyvall and Conrad Bergendoff, had different visions for how schools could form the character of their students to serve these vocational priorities. Central in this discussion is how each school envisioned the liberal arts traditions as compatible with their theological values and educational objectives. The paper will conclude with critical analysis regarding how each school currently engages this vocational legacy in discussions of their expanding missions to diverse student bodies, and how the schools relate to their sponsoring denominations.

Shannon Sandridge, Saint Louis University Growing in Goodness: A Pedagogy for the Virtues According to Aristotle

In this paper, I examine what we can learn from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics about the role of the teacher in cultivating the virtues. There is a robust literature on Aristotle’s moral philosophy, but there is surprisingly little on how teachers can best help students cultivate the virtues. This is unexpected, because Aristotle explicitly stated his purpose in the Nicomachean Ethics: “We are not inquiring into what virtue is for the sake of knowing it, but for the sake of becoming good” (1103b28). Meno famously asked Socrates whether virtue can be taught. Though Aristotle did not directly respond to Meno, in the Nicomachean Ethics or elsewhere, his answer to Meno’s question can be discerned by examining what Aristotle does. So, taking the Nicomachean Ethics as an example of how to teach ethics, I focus on what Aristotle does, to draw out his answer to what teachers should do to cultivate the virtues in our students. In this inquiry, I examine two questions: (1) What growth does Aristotle aim to bring about in his students? and (2) How does Aristotle facilitate this growth in his students? The first question regards what in the student’s nature Aristotle aims to help his students actualize. Our answer to the first question will make it clearer how to answer the second. Naturally, what one aims to teach will shape how one teaches it. The path to virtue is traveled in steps, rather than one great leap, and each step requires one to learn and grow in specific ways that enable the next. I discuss students who are (broadly) beginner, intermediate and advanced. At each step, I address (1), the question of the way the student is to grow, and then (2), the teacher’s role in facilitating this change. Learning the virtues requires more than simply assenting to Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia. The virtuous person must come to possess oneself, including one’s desires, emotions, ways of relating to others, and one’s thoughts. These must become self-possessed not simply “for the sake of knowing it” or in intellectual terms as an assent to a set of arguments, but “for the sake of becoming good,” that is, by one’s own lights, so to speak. Moreover, the desire to embody and practice the virtues must become the light by which one sees and dwells in the world. Learning the virtues thus requires a sort of transformation and re- integration, a shift in one’s way of seeing and inhabiting the world in light of one’s understanding of what is good. This re-integration shapes one’s cares, dispositions, states, relationships, and character. Thus the cultivation of the virtues requires not only growing in knowledge, but training desires, emotions, and modes of relating to others. In examining how a teacher does this, I examine the analogy (and disanalogy) with craft

49 learning. In both, learning moves through steps toward mastery, though the aim of becoming masterful in a craft is productivity, while the aim of learning the virtues is internal to activity itself.

Dennis Sansom, Samford University The Good, the Holy, and the Purpose of the University

If a University decides to make moral-character development one of its goals, it should offer explanations, objects, and people of holiness in parts of its curriculum, activities, and aesthetical expressions. The logical structure of moral action justifies this role of the holy. Moral actions have a directivity to them. They aim for a fulfilling goal, typically called either the right or the good. The notion of the good has metaphysical implications, which some find unacceptable. Consequently, the right would be prior in rational and social importance to the good. Moral action in this sense promotes, for example, social justice (i.e., the political rights of the victims of injustices), and, thus, the University should cultivate moral-character in students by advancing political causes. However, if we accept the metaphysical implications of the good (and there are reasons to do so), we should think the good is prior to the right. Moral actions in this sense aim for and embody a fulfillment of nature (both human and creation as a whole). We can understand this action in two ways. First, a Platonic understanding of the good has perfection of form as the criterion of all moral efforts. To promote moral-character on campus, a University would need to articulate such perfections. However, as is problematic in general with Platonism, perfection is an elusive idea and mostly incompatible with the inherently ambiguous and evolving situations of historical existence. Moral instruction would hence seem always out of the reach of imperfect people. Second, we can understand that the holy fulfills the good, that is, human moral actions aim for and are completed in experiencing the sacred. The Genesis account of creation teaches that, though each created day is good and functions as designed by God, the Sabbath day is the purpose of creation. In it, all of creation experiences the holiness of God within creation. The nature of goodness equips each aspect to experience an ontologically greater reality than its own goodness. Goodness longs, so to speak, for holiness, and holiness fulfills the goodness of creation. An advantage of this sense of the good over the Platonic is that we are not necessarily discouraged or defeated by the inevitable imperfections of moral actions, for the goal of moral action is not its own final-aim of perfection but of becoming more aware and responsive to the sacred experienced within the imperfections of life. A University should educate students to become good (that is, fulfill their proper functions with others and the world) and, by doing so, engender in them the longing for holiness. The University can cultivate this longing by positioning in its curriculum, activities, aesthetical expressions, and key personnel symbols and sacramental embodiments of the holy. These symbols and embodiments show that the goal of moral action is not necessarily to obtain a perfection of nature but a certain way of experiencing the world, one of awe and wonder of the divine within the world.

Kevin Scott, University of Notre Dame Waiting for Another (Doubtless Very Different) Newman: A MacIntyrean Framework for Academic Freedom

The university today, as an institution, has risen to a place of social and economic prominence that is likely unprecedented. At the same time, its meaning and purpose have rarely been so fraught with anxiety and controversy. A particularly neuralgic topic in many discussions of higher education is the nature of academic freedom. While all serious disputants within the academy affirm the importance of academic freedom as a part of university life, the scope and purpose of this freedom is hotly contested. Many progressive scholars and activists, concerned about the influences of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry in the history of university education, have tended to narrow the bounds of academic freedom, in order to positively exclude voices which they regard as harmful, pseudoscientific, or otherwise deleterious for research and teaching. At

50 the same time, a renewed Millian liberalism has focused on reaffirming the extension of academic freedom to all scholarly views, even those considered morally offensive or politically toxic. While both of these parties have important contributions to make to the university, it is apparent to many that these discussions have in recent years shed more heat than light. I would venture that the reason for this is that both parties isolate key academic values from the contexts in which they are most coherently related to the project of the university. Progressives concerned about academic freedom degenerating into harmful license intuit, correctly, that such freedoms are only intelligible within a morally accountable community. At the same time, however, this discourse often takes on therapeutic or managerial aims which are foreign to the traditional purposes of a liberal education. Conversely, Millian academic liberals are correct in placing such traditional purposes at the center of university life. Where Millian liberalism falters, however, is in failing to see that academic freedom is only really valuable in the light of a normative context that facilitates shared pursuit of virtues and the goods pursuant upon said virtues. Given this impasse, I propose that a healthier, alternative approach can be found in the work of John Henry Newman and Alasdair MacIntyre. While Newman is well-known as the foremost exponent of an influential interpretation of liberal education, it is less common to interpret Newman’s educational theory in the context of his moral epistemology. Newman’s moral epistemology, particularly his concern with concrete, personal contact as the facilitator of moral development, provides an excellent framework for expressing the interplay between personal relationships, moral knowledge, and academic inquiry. According to Newman’s philosophy of education, many of higher education’s goals are such that they require personal influence in order to be achieved. Newman’s articulation of this theory, however, has been burdened by its expression in a context experienced by many readers today as provincial and far-removed from the concerns of today’s university, namely, that of Victorian Oxford. Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on practices and traditions, however, can supplement Newman’s vision of education by joining a similarly Aristotelian view of the person to a sophisticated assessment and critique of modern normative institutions. MacIntyre’s virtue theoretic account of socially shared practices allows one to relate Newman’s Oxford to the contemporary university in a way that respects differences while also identifying commonalities of form and purpose. A Newmanian- MacIntyrean theory of education, then, is able to balance a focus on substantively academic goals with the need for maintaining a real, and therefore accountable, moral community.

Jon Singletary, Baylor University The Enneagram as Resource for Spiritual Formation and Character Development

In the late adolescent stage of identity formation, college students reflect on who they are and who they want to become. This presentation offers a process for Christian spiritual formation that can help shape identity formation in adolescents through reflection on personality and the image of God within. An ancient system of personal and spiritual formation, the Enneagram has the potential to foster a sense of self shaped by Christian spirituality and grounded in an understanding of Christian virtue. It does this by inviting reflection on who we are as beloved children of God. The Enneagram teaches that our personality reflects a way we have fallen away from that inherent image and that in our essence we have certain inherent virtues. The presentation introduces a model of the Enneagram as a tool for compassion, grounded in virtue, and shaped by Christian spirituality which recognizes the Spirit of God shaping this work within us. A model for teaching college students and fostering virtue development are included in this introduction to the Enneagram.

Alex Sosler, Montreat College A Hermeneutic of Charity: 1 Corinthians 13 as Intellectual Virtue

The modern educational landscape is often marked by suspicion and critique. Operating from a Cartesian ontology, students exist as detached reasoners whose fundamental reality is to think. However, following the thought of St. Augustine, this paper argues that students primarily exist as lovers whose flourishing is defined by loving God and loving neighbor in God. Any educational pursuit should serve that purpose. As such, a hermeneutic of charity is a fitting avenue to learn and think well. The means of the 51 university must be informed by and serve the goal of the university. This presentation proposes that 1 Corinthians 13 can function as a way to pursue learning as a set of intellectual virtues.

Caleb Spencer, Azusa Pacific University A (Renewed) Aesthetic Education: Literature, Religious Experience, and Virtue

In an Op-Ed entitled “The Anti-College is on the Rise” in the New York Times on June 8th 2019, UNC historian (of American Christianity) and frequent American religion journalist, Molly Worthen writes about “a growing movement of students, teachers and reformers who are trying to compensate for mainstream higher education’s failure to help young people find a calling: to figure out what life is really for.” She describes programs, “anti-colleges,” which “aim to prove “that it is possible to cultivate moral and existential self-confidence, without the Christian foundation that grounded Western universities until the mid- 20th century,” while also striving “to push back against the materialism and individualism that have saturated the secular left and right, all at an affordable price.” Worthen concludes, “[i]t’s a tall order”! What Worthen is describing is in part the response of many to the perceived lack of anything in the American university these days other than career preparation and status seeking. This critique includes major works like Andrew Delbanco’s College, William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep, Stanley Hauerwas’ The State of the University, and Frank Donogue’s The Last Professors, which all foretell, in various ways, a dire future for the university and its students. But of course, there are many who have come to the American university in this same time, who have left not with career preparation and status goals, but have left instead with a desire to become servants in the world with more robust conceptions of the purpose of education for human flourishing. One central way this happens is through exposure to things that are considered higher loves. My paper advances the argument that we need to renew the claim going back as far as Gorgias’s Encomium to Helen, Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s theology of desire, and even through Romantics like Schiller, that Beauty is worth knowing and then pursuing through growth in aesthetic sensibility. While there is some disagreement in the history of aesthetics about both the ontology and effects of aesthetic education, there is agreement that it matters immensely what we find beautiful, for it guides our individual lives and collective practices. Education has always been aesthetic education, even now when the university’s official position is much more neutral about the Good, the True and the Beautiful. No such neutrality is possible: what we teach and don’t teach, what we say and don’t say, what we show and don’t show, all contribute to understandings of the Transcendentals. Specifically, in my paper I will explain the very concrete ways that a course like my Introduction to Literary Studies, a Gen Ed class for students at a private Christian university, helps to shape students’ aesthetic values. I will also show how it helps them to see what Terrence Malick’s opening monologue in Tree of Life describes as the “glory shining all around them” (Malick), and how that seeing makes a difference in their immediate and future life.

Andrew Torrance, University of St Andrews Being Accountable to God in the University

For Christians and other theists, being accountable to God is seen to be foundational to the proper formation of their character, and to their particular understanding of moral and intellectual virtue. However, in many academic contexts today, Christians face enormous pressure to set aside their theological understanding in order to respect the secularity of a particular academic environment. If they are to make a case for their particular understanding of character formation and virtue, they will often be expected to demonstrate the value of their understanding according to secular criteria. Why is this? Put simply, it is because the university does not deem accountability to God as a virtue to which any of its scholars (even its theologians) should aspire. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult for the university to be attentive to the minds of religious believers. There are a number of problems with this state of affairs. The Latin “universitas” means “whole.” So, if it is to be in keeping with its Latin root, the university should strive to represent the “whole,” of which secular thought is a minority in the world and history of thought. That is, the university should seek to 52 represent the variety of moral and intellectual beliefs that contribute to society, including those of religious believers who are a majority in the worldwide community. If the university is unable to think about religious believers in their own terms, there will be many ways in which it will fail to represent the thinking of society. In this paper, I consider the important role that the theological voice can have amongst the plurality of voices that characterize the contemporary university, a community that (to varying extents and in various ways) recognizes a place for “freedom of academic expression.” In keeping with the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, I shall argue that being accountable to God should be able to be a critical part of the university’s understanding of character formation and virtue, within reason, according to some criteria that I shall lay out. At the same time, I shall also argue that, if a theological voice is to have a place in the university, the religious believer will need to be committed to transparency. That is, the person who speaks theologically will need to make clear the underlying premises to which they are committed, and which lead them to teach in the way that they do.

Matthew Walz, University of Dallas The Role of “Study” (Studium) in Character Formation: Guidance from John Paul II’s Pastores Dabo Vobis

What is the role of “study” (studium) in character formation? This is an important question for anyone concerned with the lives of college students. An answer to it can be gleaned from John Paul II’s Pastores dabo vobis (I Will Give You Shepherds), the 1992 apostolic exhortation in which he lays out a framework for the formation of priests, although it turns out to be a framework applicable to the formation of any person preparing for life and work. In Pastores dabo vobis, John Paul distinguishes four dimensions of formation: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. The primary activity of the intellectual dimension of formation is “study” (studium), the eager and serious pursuit of truth and knowledge. When seen as part of the integrated formation of the human being, study turns out to be something like the “efficient cause” of one’s overall formation, especially inasmuch as it activates and disciplines the love of truth that should ultimately underlie one’s moral and spiritual life and one’s service to others. As John Paul sees it, then, the life of study does not exist apart from or merely alongside one’s moral and spiritual formation, but in fact drives it and provides it with its ultimate orientation.

Brian Warren, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Character Before “Character”: Theatre Training as a Place for Character Building

The question of how (and if) the university can continue to mold the character of our students is a valid one. In most university mission statements, language to the effect of character development is still included. However, in the currently changing educational world, the notion of what actually constitutes a college education often does not include character building. Indeed, many college faculties may barely give such a consideration a thought in their daily instruction and classroom instructional goals. This paper will maintain that my discipline (theatre) can continue to lead the pursuit of the inculcation of character in our students. Most people know that, in theatre, we try to embody characters. But, how does the discipline instill character? To answer that question, this paper will explore the necessity of character-building for the actor (not the character) that must occur before any attempt at enacting a character can be made. The author, an associate professor of theatre at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, will describe his own methodology of character-building within the community of actors that takes place well before scripts are disseminated. This description will include explanations of key exercises for ensembles honed after years of directing for the theatre. These exercises involve building three key qualities: trust, honesty, and work ethic. The first, trust, is a key component for any performance group working together for the sake of an art form. We must trust one another. How can we establish and maintain this trust all the way through the final performance?

The second, honesty, is a foundation for the eventual creation of the illusion of spontaneity. How can we drop our well-formed personal shields so that honest reaction and impulses inhabit the character? The third is perhaps most obvious. The creation of any character involves instilling a work ethic in actors that is second to none of which I am aware. This paper will describe the work of actor training that is perhaps unclear to the general populace. Theatre is full of paradoxes. The actor is a real person, yet she is not. The scene appears real, but at the same time it is not. Some might even say that pretending propagates focus on the trivial and on an overriding artifice in our young actors. “Play” is frivolity not worth our attention and work, some may say. This paper will maintain that the opposite is true. The triad of trustworthiness, sincerity and hard work that must form the crux of actor training belies any notion of a lack of character in actors. Indeed, unlike the Hollywood tales of immorality and the conscienceless, all real actors are people of character. Their training demands it. In short, this paper will describe the world of theatre as a place that definitely builds character in college students.

Kirsten Welch, Columbia University, Teacher’s College Critical Thinking or Intellectual Virtue? Considerations for Christian Educators

As discussion concerning the virtues has become more widespread in both philosophical and educational circles, a debate has arisen among some philosophers of education concerning the priority of critical thinking versus that of intellectual character formation as an educational aim. Some philosophers suggest that the cultivation of intellectual virtues takes precedence over critical thinking skills (the “IV approach,” e.g. Baehr, 2013), whereas others argue strongly for the primacy of the latter (the “CT approach,” e.g. Siegel, 2016). In this paper, I suggest that Christian educational institutions ought to prefer the IV to the CT approach and that the additional reasons and resources available to Christian educators that support implementation of the IV approach answer at least some of the concerns about IV that have recently been raised by proponents of CT as the fundamental aim of education. To make this argument, I lay out what I take to be some of the significant objections leveled against the IV approach, focusing especially on two worries: first, what Kotzee et al. (2019) refer to as the “pedagogical” problem for the IV approach (that the IV approach does not offer adequate pedagogical resources), and second, what might be termed the “autonomy objection” (that education for intellectual virtue violates the autonomy of students). I take these two problems to be related to each other; part of the reason that proponents of CT worry about the pedagogical viability of IV is that at least some of the pedagogical methods educators might use in this approach appear to compromise the autonomy of students. In the second section, I offer some general responses to these objections. Although this first set of responses could by employed by any advocate for IV, in the third section I turn to a set of responses that seems to be uniquely available to Christian educators. Drawing on a conception of autonomy articulated by Kyla Ebels- Duggan (2015), I suggest that Christian educators have reasons to prefer an education centered on the cultivation of intellectual virtues rather than only critical thinking skills, even in light of the autonomy objection. Further, making use of the work of philosophers such as James K.A. Smith and David I. Smith (Smith, 2009; Smith and Smith, 2011), I suggest that Christian educators also possess resources to implement practically such an education that are not obviously available outside of a Christian educational environment, thereby answering the pedagogical objection. In closing, I point toward some ways in which education aimed at critical thinking skills and education for intellectual virtue might attain greater continuity and unity in a Christian context.

Cindy White, Baylor When Goods Become Gods: Fractured Identities and Safe Spaces in Sports

The aim of this presentation is to consider how the demanding nature of the dominant sports culture with its focus on extrinsic goods to validate success conjoined with a win-at-all-costs mentality shields the athlete, whether intentional or not, from authentic self-exploration, and therefore, limits the possibility of 54 deep character formation and human flourishing. Moreover, often the pedagogy and priorities of coaches (and even spiritual leaders) either can’t or won’t provide safe spaces for athletes to process their pain, misplaced priorities and fractured identities in order to discover new and redemptive practices. Christian ethicist, Gilbert Meilaender, in The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life, reminds us of this perennial struggle that “there is something deeply biblical about this sense that God’s claim upon the human heart must be whole and entire...and if no object of love other than God can really satisfy the restless heart’s desire, then it is hard to know why the heart that has found God should need or love any other object” (Meilaender, 2006). In this presentation, I seek to explore the inherent nature of divided allegiances and ask confounding questions which may lead us to praxis-oriented solutions. Does childhood imprinting affect the motivation and identity of athletes and to what degree do sports either affirm or commodify the broken identity? Is there a way for a coach or spiritual leader to provide safe spaces for athletes to “be real” without fear of shame or retribution? I will combine the theological trajectory of St. Augustine and Soren Kierkegaard with the psychological research and insights of Bessel Van Der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score, 2014), Curtis Thompson (Soul of Shame, 2015) and Brené Brown (Daring Greatly, 2012). In conclusion, I will offer suggestions on how athletic departments and sports chaplains might provide helpful emotional space for elite athletes to process and to realize more fully God’s order of loves, reframing and reorienting the goods of sports.

Jonathan Sands Wise, Georgetown College Selling Character Formation: Virtue Ethics and Admissions

Refocusing college education on character formation has many challenges, including cross- disciplinary cooperation and curriculum development on the academic side, convincing administrations and trustees of the value of such a move while getting everyone on the same page as to what “character formation” actually means, and the sheer difficulty of making any difference in our students’ characters when they are already formed to a large degree when they come to us. Underlying many of these problems (though not the last one) is the central concern of small, Christian, liberal arts colleges: can we get students to choose a college that focuses on character formation? The first question, then, is whether average high school students are or could be attracted to a college that focuses primarily on character formation. I will suggest that this is a substantial challenge that should not be taken lightly. As a variety of surveys show, the primary concerns of both students and parents run strongly to finances and careers, neither of which easily or obviously allow for a character formation focus. However, I will suggest multiple ways that we have tried to do just this in our enrollment efforts for Georgetown College with some recognizable and measurable success in key areas. While these are only fledgling efforts, they do suggest that something akin to character formation can be used to attract some students, and at least will not deter other students who must still be attracted with other enticements. I will also suggest that, while difficult, some of the best methods might involve not a message but a focus on one’s own staff: character formation must begin with personnel, including both faculty and staff, if it is to occur in students. The picture is a little rosier when it comes to retention, where the exact methods that are most powerful in character formation are also highly effective in retaining students. I will focus here primarily on education in a mentorship model, and on intentional student life efforts to create reinforcing and virtuous communities. The largest struggle here is that students must still opt in to these efforts to some extent, suggesting that character formation and retention effects will both be limited to students who are already somewhat attracted to developing these virtues. I will close with a brief consideration of the way in which the different role of character formation in admissions versus retention actually parallels the difference between the considerations that will first attract someone toward the attempt to be virtuous, such as the promise of happiness and the good life or an attraction to certain people, and the unselfish considerations that a virtuous person must foster to be fully virtuous.

John Wolfe, Dixie State University A University of Outsiders: Finding Community through Great Texts

As small, regional universities begin to expand marketing campaigns beyond their traditional target demographics, there develop several new concerns for community enrichment and student retention. These challenges are especially noticeable if the regional institution’s historically served population is racially and religiously homogenous. One university wrestling with this situation is Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. A state-focused community college until the early 2010s, DSU has started making concentrated recruitment efforts in Los Vegas, Los Angeles, and the southern California region. At the same time, DSU has also been following the state mandated goal of remaining an open enrollment institution. The result of these campaigns is a student population that consists of nearly fifty percent first generation college attenders who have had minimal exposure to university life or the idea of character development in an academic setting. The result, as former Dean Don Hinton described, is that the institution becomes “a community of outsiders.” Students from outside the region encounter the local culture and immediately feel disconnected. Students from the region feel ignored. The university becomes “unified” in its mistrust. This environment provides a unique opportunity to explore the idea of character development through the use of Great Text teaching. We argue that Great Texts, notably Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Descartes’ Discourse on Method provide a framework for students to begin developing positive personal character traits, while at the same time reflecting on the nature of social division and faction. To put it another way, great texts give “outsiders” a common language to understand themselves and others. This discussion will consist of three general parts. First, we begin by exploring the problem of “a community of outsiders.” We look at the history of this institution, the shift away from the regional institution identity, and the current climate at the university and in the community at large. The claim we put forward is that what is what is found at DSU represents a microcosm for a larger cultural shift that is going on in the region, and that the “community of outsiders” represents not just DSU, but the area of St. George as a whole. Second, we examine two distinct efforts at character building in the university. One effort is found in the Great Text pedagogy of the DSU philosophy faculty. As stated above, the emphasis on great texts is intended to both develop character and reduce faction. The second effort is found in members of St. George’s Protestant community. We will explore the presence of faction in this small community, and discuss community efforts to reduce division and promote character development. Finally, we will discuss the preliminary results of these pedagogical and social efforts, and consider how these tactics might be applicable to other institutions and social environments.

George Yancey Neither Jew nor Gentile: Achieving Diversity in a Christian Educational Context

This presentation will examine the value of racial diversity as well as some steps Christians colleges can take to enhance their chances at diversity.

Michael Yorke, Wheaton College Graduate School “A Veritable Conundrum”: Racialization and Moral Formation in Christian Higher Education

In his 2008 text Race: A Theological Account, J. Kameron Carter argues that Immanuel Kant’s intellectual vision of enlightened society is built upon the foundation of a racialized anthropology, namely, an anthropology grounded in the notion of white superiority. Therefore, the civilizing project of modernity is at once the pursuit of intellectual and anthropological progress toward racial perfection, toward whiteness. Carter goes on to contend that the success of Kant’s racialized vision of enlightened society has yielded an infected understanding of the life of the mind, such that the reality of black intellectualism (as one example) can sound counterintuitive or even oxymoronic.

Within Christian higher education, students racialized as black and brown often struggle to adjust both socially and intellectually to their environments. In both curriculum and community, these students encounter racialization that disproportionately strains the already difficult work of scholarship. Even when institutions promote constructive conversation about race for the purpose of character formation among students, the results vary widely, and often further complicate social dynamics between racialized members of the community. What, then, is the relationship between Carter’s notion of the civilizing project of modern society and the Christian higher education experience? What is the fate of moral formation in such a context? Critically examining my own experiences at Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College Graduate School (Illinois), this paper will analyze the implications of Carter’s treatment of racialization and the civilizing project of modernity for Christian higher education. I will ultimately explore the claim that racialization presents an insurmountable obstacle for the goal of Christian character formation in Christian higher education unless it is met with a comprehensive reassessment of curricular decisions and social configurations. This reassessment must sufficiently address the ways that Christian higher education has been historically beholden to, and even contributed to the racialization of the modern world.

Samuel Youngs, Bryan College Mythic and Parabolic Pedagogy: Narrative Models in Teaching

Instructors, especially in a live-classroom environment, must now more than ever question their relevance. Information floods the internet, airwaves, and publications in forms that are increasingly accessible and entertaining, so the live instructor must often therefore locate their worth in the craft, rather than content, of their teaching. This paper explores dynamic pedagogy through the dual-lens of myth and parable, arguing that students’ engagement with content and their development of intellectual virtues is fundamentally anchored by the narratival and performative dimensions of their learning experience. These dimensions can be dynamically shaped by the instructor, highlighting the importance of considered and creative pedagogical approaches. Utilizing analysis from narrative therapy, literary critics, and biblical scholars, a basic typology of “mythic” and “parabolic” pedagogy is formulated. These models are then deployed on various topical examples, emphasizing in each case the different intellectual virtues which are championed, and indicating ways in which they might serve to fortify the pedagogical impact of the Christian university.